Star Tribune
Anti-gay graffiti traumatize high school teacher in Stearns County town
Jake Pundsack awoke around 12:30 one morning last week to someone pounding the walls of his parents’ Melrose house, where he lives in the basement.
The Melrose High School biology and anatomy teacher peered outside and saw toilet paper hanging from the trees and an orange construction sign in the driveway. Kids being kids, he thought. It’s a homecoming tradition for students to TP each other’s houses, and Pundsack’s little brother goes to school there. He returned to bed.
But Pundsack was horrified when he went out to his car a bit before 7 a.m. that day and saw what was scrawled in pink and blue window chalk markers. On his front and back car windows were obscene anti-gay messages. One of the messages implied Pundsack was a pedophile. His windshield wipers were disabled, which he assumed was to make it more difficult to remove the messages.
“My heart just sank,” Pundsack said. “It still makes me sick. There’s a very clear line — throwing toilet paper and doing a prank, but when you take it that far, it’s hurtful, and it’s a hate crime.”
Pundsack, who also coaches the high school speech team, emailed the school superintendent and principal. The principal encouraged him to report the incident to the school resource officer, Pundsack said, who filed a report.
Dan Miller, chief deputy at the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed the sheriff’s office received a report on the incident and was in contact with the school and the victim. Pundsack told the Star Tribune he does not want those involved to face charges; making this a learning opportunity, he said, is more important than punishment.
Greg Winter, superintendent of Melrose Area Public Schools, declined an interview request, citing “data privacy.”
“We have a great school and supportive parents and community,” Winter said in an email.
Pundsack said the incident doesn’t color his feelings for the small town outside St. Cloud that he was thrilled to return to after graduating from college in 2022. If anything, the community’s reaction underscored why he loves Melrose.
Pundsack’s family moved to Melrose from Shakopee when he was in ninth grade. He didn’t come out as gay until college at Minnesota State University Moorhead.
“Growing up, I didn’t really hear about gay people being out and happy,” he said.
He student-taught at the same high school he’d graduated from, and when he saw a job opening in Melrose he contacted the principal immediately.
“This is where everything happened in shaping me into the person I am today,” Pundsack said. “I wanted to give back to this community that gave me so much in high school.”
The beginning of last school year, Pundsack’s first year teaching full-time, was difficult. Some students scrawled anti-gay phrases on lab tables in Pundsack’s classroom. He heard students throw around his name in the hallway with derogatory slurs.
But in time, Pundsack said — and with people realizing he’s a good teacher and good human — that went away. While he does not discuss his sexual orientation with students, a group of LGBTQ+ students have made his classroom a morning gathering space.
“The other morning, I asked: ‘Why do you come to my room?'” he said. “They’re like, ‘Mr. Pundsack, this is the one room in the whole school we know for fact we’re safe as LGBTQ students.'”
Karen Molitor, a retired Melrose High School teacher, reached out to Pundsack in support; she feared something like this could force him to leave the district. Sara Christenson, a science teacher at Melrose Middle School who was Pundsack’s mentor teacher last year, praised him as a teacher — a “professional perfectionist” — and as a forgiving human.
“It shook a lot of us,” said Christenson, who is neighbors with the Pundsacks. “Jake doesn’t want to be the poster child for Melrose to say, ‘Don’t do this to the LGBTQ community.’ But we have a lot of eyes that need to be opened for the hate that’s still being spread around here. But Jake said, ‘Let’s mark it as a lesson and move on and learn from it.’ That’s the type of person Jake is.”
Pundsack recognizes a learning curve as the community adapts to more diversity: “Having a little curveball of something new, it’s scary at first, and lots of hatred and fear comes from ignorance.”
But what he loves about Melrose is how tight-knit it is, and he’s felt the full weight of that support since the incident last week and since he posted about it on Facebook this week. He’s received letters of support from colleagues. Plenty of colleagues and neighbors have stopped by his home, asking how they can help advocate in the community. Several of the students involved apologized directly to Pundsack that same day, which he said he was grateful for.
“I’m more concerned that the kids involved learn from this than I am just about punishing them. If they just get punished and don’t realize the damages, what’s the point?,” Pundsack said. “I want them to be able to grow as people, and I want our community to grow as well.”
Northern State 35, Concordia (St. Paul) 34: Wyatt Block’s 2-yard TD run and the PAT with 10 seconds remaining lifted the Wolves past the host Golden Bears. Block’s touchdown capped an 11-play, 72-yard drive by the Wolves, who trailed 24-7 in the second quarter. Jeff Isotalo-McGuire’s 34-yard field goal with three minutes, 32 seconds remaining gave the Golden Bears a 34-28 lead.
Winona State 31, Bemidji State 28: Cade Stenstrom rushed for two TDs and passed for 150 yards and a TD to help the host Warriors outlast the Beavers. Stenstrom’s 1-yard TD run and the PAT with two minutes, 10 seconds remaining gave the Warriors a 31-21 lead. The Beavers responded with an 11-play, 93-yard drive to pull within 31-28 with 18 seconds remaining but the Warriors recovered the ensuing kickoff.
Div. I-AA
North Dakota State 59, Murray State 6: The top-ranked Bison built a 42-3 lead in the first half and went on to defeat the host Racers in Murray, Ken. CharMar Brown ran for 97 yards and three TDs for the Bison.
South Dakota State 20, South Dakota 17 (OT): Amar Johnson’s 3-yard TD run in overtime lifted the host Jackrabbits to the victory. The Coyotes opened the OT with a 40-yard field goal.
Youngstown State 41, North Dakota 40 (OT): The host Penguins went first in OT and scored and then stopped North Dakota’s two-point conversion to hold on for the victory. The Penguins sent the game into OT on a 35-yard field goal with 12 seconds remaining.
Div. III
Augsburg 35, St. Olaf 34 (OT): The host Auggies stopped a two-point conversion in overtime to outlast the Oles. The Auggies went first in the overtime and scored on a 25-yard pass from Ryan Harvey to Tyrone Wilson. It was Harvey’s fifth TD pass — the fourth to Wilson. After the Auggies’ PAT, the Oles scored on a 25-yard TD pass from Theo Doran to Braden Menz. But the Oles’ pass attempt for the conversion failed.
After splitting their two-game West Coast trip to begin the season, the Wolves improved to 2-1 with a 112-101 win over Toronto in their home opener. It was a wire-to-wire win that featured some strong bursts of play from the Wolves and other times when their decision-making was suspect. But those moments when they were on, specifically the start of the game and most of the third quarter, were enough to carry them against a shorthanded Raptors team that was without RJ Barrett, Bruce Brown and Immanuel Quickley.
Julius Randle had 24 points while Anthony Edwards had 24 on 21 shot attempts. Donte DiVincenzo had 16 off the bench. Nickeil Alexander-Walker left the game in the fourth quarter and did not return, though he was in the bench area for the final minutes after going to the locker room briefly.
The Wolves’ starting lineup had its best stretch of basketball on the season after that unit started off sluggish in the first two games. Mike Conley, who was 3-for-16 to open the year, hit two early threes to set the tone, though Conley would finish 2-for-8.
Donte DiVincenzo replaced him at point guard halfway through the quarter and continued the hot shooting from the point guard slot with three threes of his own. The Wolves forced five Toronto turnovers and had a 32-18 lead after one.
Coach Chris Finch toyed with some different lineup combinations in the first half as he had Conley and DiVincenzo begin the quarter together while having Joe Ingles run the point later in the quarter. It led to an uneven second, and the Wolves led 56-44 at halftime.
But the Wolves played inspired coming out of the break. Jaden McDaniels, who didn’t take a shot in the first half, had nine points in the opening minutes of the third. Edwards hit a pair of threes as they pushed their lead to 22. The Wolves weren’t sharp closing the night, and the Raptors had the game within right inside of two minutes, but the Wolves had built enough of a cushion.
Rudy Gobert. Gobert had 15 points and 13 rebounds and was the beneficiary of some lobs from his teammates like Edwards, Conley, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Joe Ingles. Gobert also finished with four blocks.
Gobert had two blocks on one possession in the fourth quarter that got the crowd off its feet and Gobert pounding his chest. Gobert blocked D.J. Carton and Jamison Battle.
Star Tribune
Trump denigrates Detroit while appealing for votes in a suburb of Michigan’s largest city
NOVI, Mich. — Donald Trump further denigrated Detroit while appealing for votes Saturday in a suburb of the largest city in swing state Michigan.
”I think Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” the former president told supporters in Novi. He said people want him to say Detroit is ”great,” but he thinks it ”needs help.”
The Republican nominee for the White House had told an economic group in Detroit earlier this month that the ”whole country will end up being like Detroit” if Democrat Kamala Harris wins the presidency. That comment drew harsh criticism from Democrats who praised the city for its recent drop in crime and growing population.
Trump’s stop in Novi, after an event Friday night in Traverse City, is a sign of Michigan’s importance in the tight race. Harris is scheduled for a rally in Kalamazoo later Saturday with former first lady Michelle Obama on the first day that early in-person voting becomes available across Michigan. More than 1.4 million ballots have already been submitted, representing 20% of registered voters. Trump won the state in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden carried it four years later.
Michigan is home to major car companies and the nation’s largest concentration of members of the United Auto Workers. It also has a significant Arab American population, and many have been frustrated by the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza after the attack by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
During his rally, Trump spotlighted local Muslim and Arab American leaders who joined him on stage. These voters ”could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said, adding that he was banking on ”overwhelming support” from those voters in Michigan.
“When President Trump was president, it was peace,” said one of those leaders, Mayor Bill Bazzi of Dearborn Heights. ”We didn’t have any issues. There was no wars.”
While Trump is trying to capitalize on the community’s frustration with the Democratic administration, he has a history of policies hostile to this group, including a travel ban targeting Muslim countries while in office and a pledge to expand it to include refugees from Gaza if he wins on Nov. 5.
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