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Santa Ono sits down with The Daily to talk U-M affairs
The University of Michigan President discussed Campus Plan 2050, DEI and campus tensions MARISSA CORSI, BARRETT DOLATA & LYRA WILDER Daily News Editors & Daily Staff Reporter
The Michigan Daily sat down with University President Santa Ono Monday morning to discuss Campus Plan 2050, University responses to campus tensions and conversations surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion. The Daily provided Ono with the questions prior to the interview. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. The Michigan Daily: The University Board of Regents voted to extend your contract to 2032. In the past two years of your tenure, what do you think was your greatest success? Santa Ono: I brought this threevolume set of our plans. This is called Campus Plan 2050, and you can see the 3,600 acres of campus that we have multi-decade plans for. There’s not enough residence halls; we heard that from students. This is essentially bringing to life a lot of the priorities of what we call Vision 2034, which is a 10-year plan. This is really thinking about how we’re going to change and transform the campus to animate and bring to life what we’re going to do, everything from Central Campus, North Campus, to the Ross Athletic Campus. You can see some of it already happening. The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Pavilion, which is a much needed expansion of the hospital, will allow us to renovate other parts of the hospital to provide state-of-the-art care. There’s a new rec center going up, which is much needed because we don’t have enough recreational space for students. Those are just a couple of the examples. Another thing that we’re very excited about is Marygrove College, which was an underenrolled Catholic school that, with a significant investment from the Kresge Foundation, we’ve been able to renovate those buildings. The dormitories have been totally renovated, and an entire cohort of students from the Marsal School of Education are now actually situated in Detroit, where they can actually participate with students and faculty from other schools to impact the educational experience of K-12 students who are going through that school. Our students are there, and it gives them an outstanding opportunity to directly be involved in the
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transformation of public education in a major metropolitan area. We’ve launched a couple of new institutes as part of this vision. We very recently launched a new Institute for Civil Discourse, and we’re very excited with that. We’re going to look for an outstanding director for that program, and it’s a place where faculty, students and staff from all three campuses and all 19 colleges of the Ann Arbor campus will be able to participate in modeling of civil discourse across a set of difficult issues — but also be sort of a sandbox for faculty from all three campuses, but also hopefully from other universities and also other institutions to come to create curriculum and create opportunities to share civil discourse. There are a number of other things that will actually animate the priorities of Vision 2034, in terms of investments and programs, and in some cases, new institutes and new buildings. That’s kind of what I’m most excited about at the University of Michigan. We’re already hitting the ground running with
actually moving forward with the implementation of some of these priorities through investments and launching new institutes and a recruitment of outstanding people to the University. TMD: What would you have done differently? SO: I want to be even more ambitious for the University. Some people have said Campus Plan 2050 is pretty ambitious, but this is a great university, and my responsibility is to elevate it even further. TMD: According to a Nov. 20 letter sent to the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs by Senate Chair Rebekah Modrak, the Board of Regents are allegedly considering defunding certain DEI initiatives. In a Dec. 1 interview between Regent Sarah Hubbard (R) and Fox News, Hubbard explained the board would take a critical look at programs and spending to analyze DEI results. While University Provost Laurie McCauley issued a Nov. 27 letter to officials explaining that DEI will not fully be defunded, and the Go Blue Guarantee has expanded,
has the administration considered cutting DEI measures? SO: I’m really excited about that investment in the Go Blue Guarantee. Where we are right now, the landscape is shifting quite as we speak with the executive orders. We have a responsibility as a public university to work within federal guidelines and also be true to our values. There are no decisions that I know of right now. It is true, as I think Regent Hubbard said, and perhaps others have said, that there have been conversations that the Regents, as the overseers of the University, have asked general questions. It’s true that the Provost is central with the other executive vice presidents to thinking about the transition to a new government, but I’m not aware of any decisions at this point. I think that there’s a transfer transition group that’s thinking about all these things, but I think that’s the extent of where we are right now. TMD: At a recent meeting and in a letter sent Jan. 23, the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs criticized both you and the
Board of Regents for your response to former executive director of the Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives Rachel Dawson’s firing, urging you to restore her to her post. Dawson was fired after she was accused of saying Jewish students were “wealthy and privileged” and did not need diversity services in a private conversation with two other educators. Despite receiving a warning and instructions to receive training, she was fired shortly after Regent Bernstein wrote to President Ono calling for her termination. SACUA voiced concern over regental opinions influencing the processes of investigations and discipline of University personnel and called for safeguards against the removal of members of the University for politically-charged reasons. How were you involved in addressing the allegations against Dawson? SO: I know that it’s been stated that I responded to that situation. I don’t think I have. This is an HR matter, so I can’t say more, but thank you for this question. TMD: The University updated the Statement of Student Rights and
Responsibilities. In the updated SSRR, the University can now act as a complainant against students, whereas before all complaints were filed by students, faculty or staff members. Why has the University decided to make this change? SO: It’s pretty common at other Big Ten universities and many other universities that not only can faculty, staff and students make complaints when there’s a case of discrimination or wrongdoing, but as you may appreciate, sometimes it’s very hard for someone in a very difficult situation to actually make a complaint. They may not feel safe. It could be somebody who might have had sexual abuse or harassment or something like that, and there could be a power imbalance. That’s the reason why, in many universities, it’s possible for the university to complain on their behalf. I think that’s the primary driver, is to try to get into alignment with other institutions. The other change that was made was that for both the complainant and the alleged perpetrator, it was taking a very long time to go through a process, and that doesn’t help either party. It’s very difficult for someone who might have been wrong to wait for a long time, especially if they’re feeling unsafe. If you imagine that something happened to you, you want to have some kind of resolution, whatever the transgression might be. It’s also important that there’s due process — every individual who is an alleged perpetrator is actually perhaps not guilty of what has been alleged. It’s also very, very difficult for that individual to wait a very long time. For that reason, I think that the University put forward some sort of time frame to try to complete those processes. TMD: During times of heightened campus tensions, how do you draw the line between free speech and disruption? How do you reconcile with those who feel their free speech rights have been infringed upon? SO: This is one of the most difficult questions that even the best legal scholars globally are reviewing and writing about today. If you are a private university, you have a little bit more latitude. If you’re a public university, we are beholden to the First Amendment. It’s also true that we settle with the Office for Civil Rights. We also have Title VI obligations from the Civil Rights Amendment. Read more at MichiganDaily.com
CAMPUS LIFE
Food Literacy for All hosts ‘Food as Freedom’ talk The MLK Symposium event discussed food justice, cultural resilience
GRETA FEAR
Daily Staff Reporter
More than 75 University of Michigan students, faculty and community members gathered Tuesday evening in the Michigan Union’s Rogel Ballroom for “Food as Freedom,” featuring Tambra Raye Stevenson, a food justice activist and founder of Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics and Agriculture. As a collaboration between Michigan Dining and the community-academic partnership course Food Literacy for All, the MLK symposium event began with a reception featuring dishes prepared by MDining staff with personal cultural connections to the food. Amanda Ewing, director of diversity, equity and inclusion for MDining, spoke to the crowd highlighting the MDining staff’s desire to see their own identities represented through the food they create. “We really wanted to see ourselves reflected in an MLK symposium event and mark the MLK day with something that reflected our team,” Ewing said. “Throughout these conversations,
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I started to envision an event where we connect our team with the symposium by making food a part of the conversation, rather than a separate element.” Shalanda Baker, vice provost for sustainability and climate action, took the stage next, remarking the importance of rethinking global systems, including the food system, to be more equitable and sustainable. “We know that so many of our systems, whether that be the food system, the energy system, the transportation
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system, have actually operated to produce inequality, produce environmental harm and displace and dispossess (people),” Baker said. “So this program, I think, is a part of thinking through new ways to interact with the Earth, interact with each other and most importantly, how to take care of each other.” During the talk, Stevenson outlined the historical use of agriculture to put Black communities at a disadvantage, noting how colonialism has often been enforced through revoking
cultural food and imposing food with negative health effects to gain control. “On plantations, heavily salted rations were given not to just nourish, but to keep bodies alive for labor,” Stevenson said. “Over time, these heavily salted foods became staples and survival diets passing down generations of overconsumption that linger in our Black communities today. This legacy has resulted in chronic diseases like hypertension and stroke.” Stevenson described how food
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can be a harmful weapon used against marginalized people. She emphasized how food deserts, which disproportionately affect communities of Color, can increase health risks and perpetuate existing inequalities. “These ingredients may be sweet, light and savory, but there’s a legacy of bitterness,” Stevenson said. “They’ve left us with metabolic diseases like hypertension, diabetes and heart disease, and they’ve turned our food into a weapon against us. The denial or manipulation of food isn’t just a
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physical act, it’s a psychological weapon that reinforces power structures from the starvation of enslaved individuals to racialized food hierarchies.” In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Engineering freshman Megan Wheeling explained how the event opened her eyes to the complexities of agricultural systems. “My main takeaway was that food systems are a lot more complicated than we make them out to be,” Wheeling said. “This taught me that there’s a lot of intricacies affecting the current state of food and the cultural meanings behind it.” Stevenson emphasized during the event how food has the power to be reclaimed by and provide justice for marginalized people. “Let us remember that we are not born at the table of oppression,” Stevenson said. “By understanding how food has been weaponized historically, we can better recognize the ongoing inequities in our food system and work toward food as freedom, equity and justice….History teaches us that food can also be that tool of freedom. So let’s shift to that power we hold and can reclaim.”
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