The University of Minnesota, Morris held its graduation last weekend, and brought me there to speak. My speech is here if anyone wants to watch—it’s at the 49-minute mark—but the school itself is far more interesting than whatever I said.
UMN Morris, one of five campuses of the University of Minnesota, is a small liberal arts school with a distinctive history. It’s on the prairie near the homelands of several native nations, and it once was the site of an Indian boarding school—the kind of institution that, in the 1800’s and 1900’s, offered young people an education but also separated them from their families and their ancestral languages and cultures.
That school closed more than a century ago, but the modern university that eventually grew in its place still offers free tuition to students from tribal communities. Students from many native groups attended a ceremony during graduation weekend, where each graduate was wrapped in a quilt featuring the school colors.
These students form part of a diverse student body; it’s majority white, but the students who crossed the stage at graduation last weekend were of many races. Last fall, that diversity became a flashpoint. Enrollment is down, and at a meeting of the University of Minnesota board of regents, vice chairman Steve Sviggum asked a question. “Is it possible that at Morris, we’ve become too diverse?” he said. “Is that possible, all from a marketing standpoint?” He said he’d received letters from friends whose children didn’t choose Morris because they “just didn’t feel comfortable there.”
His question provoked reporting that gave other reasons for declining enrollment. This report by Minnesota Public Radio points to a drop in the number of international students who came to Morris during the pandemic.
This report says the University of Minnesota has seen a drop in attendance at several campuses, driven by students who seem to think that college is getting too expensive and that remote learning during the pandemic wasn’t worth it. Morris had the steepest drop by far, but not the only one.
This report indicates that enrollment is down at many colleges nationwide, a situation described as “a crisis.” In that context, you could make a case that Morris is fortunate that students of color are turning up on campus to keep the numbers from sagging further.
Sviggum apologized amid criticism, and stepped down from his leadership position as vice chairman, but also insisted he was simply asking a question.
Dylan Young, president of the Morris student association, invited Sviggum to lunch on campus. Young, who grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, told me he brought along other students, who spent an hour “sharing our own stories and demonstrating how diversity has impacted our own lives.”
Young told me he wasn’t trying to resolve the disagreement so much as give Sviggum more exposure to the campus he oversaw from a distance. Young found the meeting “a little heated,” though he managed to end it politely by offering Sviggum a tour of campus. After it was over, Young publicly criticized Sviggum and called on him to resign his seat on the board.
Sviggum, in an email, told me the meeting was “a little disappointing.” He said he “did enjoy listening to the students’ stories,” but “unfortunately there were no press or Administration officials at the lunch,” as he had expected. He wished there had been some independent observer.
Sviggum said he had “fiduciary responsibilities” to ask questions.
It’s true that people have a right to ask questions. How else do you find out what you don’t know? As a journalist, it’s my job to ask questions, which people may sometimes find to be harsh or unfair. But if I do my job well, I should try to ask thoughtful questions that are grounded in fact; and I should try to learn something from the answers. So I wondered what Sviggum thought now that he’s heard the responses to his question.
After our email exchange, I called him. “I’m out fencing my cattle,” he said cheerfully. He’s from rural Minnesota, a onetime high school teacher and coach who rose to become the speaker of the state House of Representatives.
I said: Do you feel you now have the answer to your question about diversity and enrollment at Morris? He said no. He acknowledged that enrollment is down nationwide and at several University of Minnesota campuses. He acknowledged that Morris had a particular problem with losing so many international students. But something still bothers him, which he wishes he had phrased differently. “If I was going to correct my question,” he told me, “I’d say the liberal culture of the Morris campus” might be the problem, rather than its diversity.
The controversy over Sviggum’s remarks is over: his term at the board of regents expired, and I got to see Dylan Young receive his degree as fellow students and family members cheered.
But it’s routine for colleges to become cultural battlegrounds. Across the country, elite universities face criticism for efforts to restrict “harmful” speech. Florida colleges face state pressure to pare back what they teach. National headlines about such fights often bring more heat than light.
UMN Morris is one of many colleges that may be able to address our divisions in a more pragmatic way. That’s because of its location.
Morris is in a rural area. The campus tends to be younger and more liberal; surrounding counties tend to be older and more conservative.
We shouldn’t oversimplify this. Election maps show at least some votes were cast for Donald Trump in the precinct that includes UMN Morris; and rural areas are far more diverse in background and thought than outsiders may assume. Many of the students of color at Morris come from rural areas!
But in terms of raw numbers—who has the majority—many colleges in rural towns are patches of blue in a red sea.
Uncomfortable as this may feel, it creates possibilities. Staff members at UMN Morris showed me their efforts to study and develop green energy—like the wind turbines that provide electricity to campus, or the biomass plant that helps to heat it.
They try to talk about these projects in a way that respects the interests of rural communities. Whatever a particular farmer may think about fighting climate change, a solar array and a battery on their property offers energy independence when a storm takes down the power lines.
Steve Sviggum, while fencing his cattle, agreed that colleges and surrounding rural communities could collaborate, “if they’re willing to be open, and willing to ask questions and willing to join in each other’s lives.”
Many universities are able to build on longstanding bonds with surrounding communities. Last year I spoke with Dave Peters, of the Iowa State University extension service. He drives from town to town, offering the university’s resources to help with local economic development.
The key, he said, was “chasing the radiator”—driving to meet people. “They like to see you in person. They like to shake your hand and size you up.”
Peters added that he doesn’t tell communities what to do, but asks what they need.
In the largely red state of Ohio this spring, the president of Oberlin College was challenged on whether that institution is doing enough. Carmen Twillie Ambar invited questions from a group of prospective students and parents, one of whom asked: How does your college, with its progressive reputation, relate to the conservative surrounding area?
People in the room knew that relations have been hard. In 2016, some Oberlin students accused the owners of a local bakery of racism. The bakery owners accused Oberlin of endorsing the protest, sued for defamation, and received a settlement of more than $36 million.
Ambar, who was not at Oberlin when the bakery incident took place, said she welcomed the challenge of bridging the divide. She stressed her own family’s rural roots. (She is Oberlin’s first Black president, and said her father grew up on a farm in a segregated area known as Dark Corner, Arkansas.) She said progressives might find it more productive to talk with conservatives in Ohio than to talk with people who already agreed with them in New York City.
She said the college must serve surrounding communities—and that national divisions sometimes fall away in local conversations. Sometimes.
Thanks for reading Differ We Must, where I explore our modern-day divisions. If you don’t have a free or paid subscription, I hope you’ll sign up; both support this work and one supports it a lot!
My forthcoming book Differ We Must explores divisions of the past: it tells Lincoln’s life story through his meetings with people who disagreed with him. That aspect of his story is relevant today, and you can preorder here to get the book October 3.
Here’s what growing up in a “diverse” town did for me. I grew up with Black, British, Danish, Jewish and LGBTQ neighbors. I ate bagels. I learned to speak French when I was seven (one of our neighbors tutored us). I met theater people through our theater neighbor. My parents were active in politics, so I met several presidents and numerous senators, as a kid in Michigan, no less. My first job was in a bookstore. By the time I became an adult, I could pretty much talk to anybody because I had met all kinds of people. Tell me how my town was bad for me?
Enjoyed the writing. An interesting topic and maybe suggestions in a way forward to bring diverse perspectives more together in our polarized country.