Star Tribune
We need ‘a shared vision’ for the U
University of Minnesota president finalist James Holloway told students and staff Wednesday that he was drawn to the job because of the U’s service to the state — and if he gets it, he’ll aim to sell others on the school’s value as well.
“I think it’s really important for us to create a shared vision of why we’re here and why what we do is important,” Holloway said in a public forum held on the Twin Cities campus Wednesday. “The thing about the University of Minnesota that is critically important is that it is very clearly created to support and serve the state.”
Holloway is one of three finalists in the running to become next University of Minnesota president, overseeing five campuses that together serve about 68,000 students and employ more than 27,000 people. Also up for consideration are Laura Bloomberg, president of Cleveland State University and former dean of the U’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and Rebecca Cunningham, vice president for research and innovation at the University of Michigan.
The new president will take over at a time when the U is trying to reverse declining enrollment at some of its locations, chart the future of its medical programs, and convince state lawmakers to provide hundreds of millions in additional funding. Student and faculty leaders have said they hope the next president will help them build a better relationship with the Legislature and bring in money to help lower tuition or increase faculty pay.
Holloway currently works as the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of New Mexico, a public research university that has nearly 27,000 students and about 14,000 employees.
His remarks came at the end of a whirlwind three-day tour in which he visited all five U campuses, as the other finalists will do as well. For about an hour, he fielded questions submitted online and from dozens of people gathered in a theater inside the U’s Coffman Memorial Union.
If he’s selected for the job, Holloway said he would aim to highlight the unique attributes of each campus for prospective students and to make information about new scholarship opportunities for Indigenous students more visible.
“I think one of the opportunities we have is to really think about enrollment across the system and think about how we can ensure that we give students the options to go to the part of the system that works for them,” he said.
Holloway said he built relationships with lawmakers in New Mexico by meeting with them before funding asks were on the table, sometimes to discuss something as simple as sharing book recommendations. And he credited those relationships with helping the university secure additional funding to raise faculty pay.
If a university loses someone because it offers lower pay, “it’s a loss to the state,” he said.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
