U of M President: 'Staff were terrified' leading up to student arrests

NINA MOINI: University of Minnesota has been under a microscope in the last week with 11 students arrested on the Twin Cities' campus after occupying Morrill Hall, which holds the Office of the President. Student groups say all 11 students got an interim suspension and are asking people to call the President's Office to demand that those suspensions be lifted.

And this all comes at a busy time for the university as they gear up for the legislative session in hopes of getting the funding request to the Board of Regents has made that they just recently passed. So joining me now is University of Minnesota president, Dr. Rebecca Cunningham. Thank you for being here.

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: Thanks so much for having me.

NINA MOINI: I'm so happy to have this time. Thank you. And we're going to try to hit as many issues as we can while we have you. But let's start with last week's events on campus. As I just mentioned, your office is likely being flooded, perhaps with calls to lift the student suspensions. You're new to this role and to the university. Obviously, probably trying to make connections and relationships with students and set your own agenda. Why did you see that as an appropriate course of action, the suspensions?

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: Sure. And I would say we're also hearing a wide variety of perspectives from the events last week. So the University of Minnesota supports individual rights to free speech and peaceful protests. And I've supported demonstrations here that are non-violent, lawful, and follow our university policies.

In fact, we had half a dozen such peaceful protests before the events of last week, and we've had two peaceful protests since then last week that took place on the campus without incident. The civic engagement is consistent with university policies. We're also able, though, to have time, place, and manner rules.

So the way we think about this is every member of our community has the right to free speech, to express themselves. But with that also comes the responsibility to not interfere with or impede the rights of others to speak, study, teach, work, and learn. I've been very proactive at communicating and working with student groups since I got here this summer about those rights and responsibilities, and how they could have free speech and peaceful and lawful demonstrations.

But I do want to be clear. Last week's activity in Morrill Hall was not a peaceful protest. Those actions crossed the line into illegal activity and were absolutely unacceptable behavior within our university community. Protesters barricaded entry, exit doors, spray painted the building and equipment inside, broke interior windows, and did damage.

I'll just say I had staff working in the building when masked individuals, some dressed in tactical gear, forced their way into locked office suites by breaking interior windows. I had staff that were terrified last week. And so that's why I proceeded with the course of action of asking our U of M campus police to restore order and safety to our building.

NINA MOINI: Other than the suspensions as a consequence, how do you see creating a situation where you can prevent something like that from happening again, that, as you say, people felt endangered and rules were broken and property was damaged?

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: So we clearly have more work to do on campus, on how people can feel that they're getting their ideas across peacefully while not crossing over into the line. I think our role as the administration is to try to make those lines very bright and very clear for what certainly we want our young people to use their voices in a passionate way to try to change the world.

However, they need to do that within the laws and policies of our university, our state, and the country. So I can't speak towards-- our privacy laws prevent me from sharing any information about the specifics of the internal processes with the students.

NINA MOINI: Sure. Well, I'd like to move on. Last week, Cathy Wurzer was supposed to moderate a conversation with Dr. Fauci that got postponed and the talk was coinciding with campus protests. What went into the decision to postpone that lecture? Were they safety concerns or perhaps law enforcement staffing concerns?

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: Yeah, it was a difficult decision to reschedule Dr. Fauci's lecture last week, but it's an important lecture. And we had a complicated set of events last week on campus in the 24 hours, and we determined it was best to reschedule that to make sure we were going to have the best experience for our attendees in the university community and really make the most of Dr. Fauci's time on campus.

NINA MOINI: You might have heard our interview a moment ago with a member of the Minneapolis City Council. Lots of talk about police staffing and resources. How is the university doing in terms of resources to be able to handle things like protests and other crime that might be occurring on campus?

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: Well, I'll say I think it's important to get out there really clearly that campus has been incredibly safe. And I've repeatedly said the areas around campus, including Dinkytown, are in the first or second safest precincts in the city. And overall, we have an incredibly safe experience for our campus and for our students. And much safer than actually many universities where they're located around the country.

So this is a wonderful place for our students to come and a very safe, exciting place for them to experience a vibrant urban university. And with that, I think our police department is doing a fabulous job.

NINA MOINI: Do you feel like there are enough resources? Are you looking for more? I know that there was a partnership that was rekindled with Minneapolis Police.

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: I'd like to focus on how well things are going right now on that. And perhaps maybe talk to you about some of the other great things that we're doing at the university, including you mentioned our legislative requests, which I think the people of Minnesota should be really interested in and how we support our students.

NINA MOINI: Sure. I think some people are concerned about crime as well, but certainly a lot of safe areas and a lot of positive things going on.

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: I'll reinforce how safe campus has been this fall, and all the great work that our campus resources have gone into. We have a new amazing Dinkytown campus safety location. I had the pleasure of walking Dinkytown one Saturday night recently, and I have to say I saw a vibrant student community that was excited. And I talked to students. They were thrilled to be living there and felt really good about their neighborhood.

NINA MOINI: OK. Well, let's move on to the request to state lawmakers. So the Board of Regents recently approved a $235 million operational budget request for the fiscal year of 2026/2027, and a capital request for 2025 of $225 million. So this would be one of the biggest investments in that plan I read is for academic health. Can you talk about why that's a priority?

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: Sure. And we have a number of requests in that budget that you just mentioned. I mean, I'll just start with the key request is for our core operational support, and that's support to keep the price down for students and for families. We already have a net price for which is what students and families actually pay, which is the lowest among Minnesota four-year universities when you account for the financial aid and such that we give.

And it's really important to us to keep that down and really strong support for the U of M is critical. The elected leader's actions directly affect our ability to provide that accessible, world-class education for our 70,000 students, while also supporting our 26,000 employees who make the university, one of Minnesota's greatest assets.

So that's our core support is really important. Also in that support is ways that we can support our students once they get here. You may we have the biggest enrolling class, over 7,300 first year students and 1,700 transfer students, which brings more than 10,000 new students to campus across our five campuses this year.

But with that, students need more support once they get here in order to really thrive. And that's part of our state request as well, including more support for mental health services, more access to basic needs. I heard that conversation in your prior caller, as well as how we improve career preparation for our services students so once they get here they're better prepared when they leave.

In terms of our health requests, one of the things we're intensely focused on how the university drives a healthy Minnesota. And we do that by addressing the state health care needs and also their health workforce challenges. We know Minnesotans already live healthier because of the grads and employees that are doctors, pharmacists, dentists, nurses. They keep the hospitals and clinics running.

One of the requests we have for the state is a health sciences strategic plan request that that funding would increase over the next decade more than 1,000 health care workers across the state of Minnesota. That includes specific training that would fill rural health care jobs through programs in Duluth, St. Cloud, as well as increasing where and how our folks are trained so that they can stay here in Minnesota and serve the state of Minnesota. So we're really excited about those requests.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, a wide range, certainly. And I know this fall, before I let you go, the university had the largest tuition increase in more than a decade for the Twin Cities campus. If the university doesn't get what you say it needs from the state, is there another tuition increase coming down the pipeline?

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: I'll say the state partnership is absolutely integral. We have to be honest that there's much to celebrate here. But in order to maintain and advance our students in the state economy, we need state support. So I think that answers your question.

NINA MOINI: All right, Dr. Cunningham, thanks for being with us this afternoon.

REBECCA CUNNINGHAM: Thank you so much for having me.

NINA MOINI: That was University of Minnesota president, Dr. Rebecca Cunningham.