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Wednesday, February 26, 2025
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ADMINISTRATION
UMich Regents discuss challenges to higher education “Looking to the future, we’re facing a time of some challenge and change.”
Jenna Hickey/DAILY University President Santa Ono leads the Board of Regents meeting in Ruthven Thursday afternoon.
GRACE LEE
Daily Staff Reporter
The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents met for the first time this year in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Thursday afternoon to discuss challenges to higher education, approve the wind down of the U-M Health Plan and hear comments on increasing shared governance for students and faculty. University President Santa Ono began the meeting with opening remarks, commenting on the uncertainty brought about by the new presidential administration’s executive orders and National Institute of Health budget cuts. Ono said the University would need to reevaluate its financial operations in the preparation for future funding cuts.
“Looking to the future, we’re facing a time of some challenge and change,” Ono said. “This is a critical moment for higher education. … We are taking steps to be as prepared as possible to respond wisely and quickly to any financial impacts that may lie ahead. As a public university we have a responsibility to ensure that we are efficient in our use of dollars from American taxpayers.” Ono also said the University would continue to emphasize its commitment to freedom of speech and academic learning. “Though we are navigating many changes, I want to make one thing very clear for the members of the University — This University will remain steadfast in its commitment to academic credence, freedom of speech and freedom of expression, ”
Ono said. “ Our distinguished faculty must be able to exchange ideas, question assumptions, challenge views and engage with a (range) of scholarly subjects and materials.” Both the Proposed Winddown of UM Health Plan and Revisions to the Board of Regents’ Bylaws: Chapter II: University Executive Officers were passed unanimously with no abstentions. The discontinuation of U-M Health Plan, which oversees both the Michigan Care and Michigan Care Advantage healthcare insurance plans, was announced Nov. 27. Due to consistent losses in the past five years despite efforts to reach financial stability, the University opted to wind down the plan and achieve full dissolution by 2027. The board then heard a report from LSA senior Mario Thaqi,
ADMINISTRATION
Pro-Palestinian activists hold first rally since SAFE suspension
Protestors ask the community to remain focused on Palestine despite the ceasefire in Gaza JOSEPHINE ANDERSON Daily Staff Reporter
Pro-Palestinian activists held a rally outside of the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School Thursday afternoon to bring attention to the ceasefire in Gaza and ask the community to remain focused on Palestine. Approximately 75 attendees gathered on East Washington Street for the protest. Engineering senior Maryam Shafie, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality co-president, spoke first. While the event was not officially sponsored by SAFE due to the limitations of its suspension, Shafie attended the event independently. Shafie said SAFE was founded in 2002 to build a community for Palestinian students and to pressure the University to divest from companies profiting off Israeli military operations. “In 2002, a group of students at the University of Michigan
came together with a vision— to create a campus that can talk about Palestine, to build a community for Palestinian students and to hold the University accountable for its ties to Israeli apartheid,” Shafie said. “From its inception, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality has been more than just a student organization. It is a liberatory space, and a movement for justice within a corrupt institution.” Shafie said the organization’s mission continues despite the University suspending SAFE this month after being charged with violations of three of the Center for Campus Involvement’s Standards of Conduct for Recognized Student Organizations. “The University of Michigan thinks that by banning SAFE it can make this movement disappear,” Shafie said. “They have grossly underestimated the power of their own student body. SAFE is not just an organization. It is the people who carry its mission forward.
Meleck Eldahshoury/DAILY Protesters march at the SAFE organized rally calling for University divestment Thursday afternoon.
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Our commitment to justice cannot be erased by any policy or institution. The knowledge shared, the history written and the complicity exposed over the last 23 years do not disappear with the (suspension).” David Zeglen, lecturer of international and comparative studies at the University of Michigan, recalled 2002, his first year at Concordia University as an undergraduate. Zeglen said he protested with Concordia’s chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights against his university for hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We protested an event on campus that was hosting a politician from Israel, a war criminal named Benjamin Netanyahu,” Zeglen said. “In response, (Concordia University) sent the police to beat us, the law to prosecute us and the administrators to ban us. We were disheartened, but we endured, we continued and we grew in the aftermath.” Zeglen recalled a faculty member during that year telling him that courage comes from past struggles. He cited the Black Action Movement, LGBTQ+ activism, environmental protests, the women’s movement and the anti-war movement as past examples and promised to serve U-M students in the same ways his faculty served him. “I vow to you that as long as I am in service to you as faculty, I will support you like I was supported as a student, in the continuing chain back through history,” Zeglen said.
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Central Student Government president. Thaqi began by highlighting the University’s response to student protests in the past year and said a student seat on the Board of Regents would stimulate more discourse and engagement. “Despite 2025 being labeled as the University’s year of democracy, civic empowerment and global engagement, community members have been silenced, peaceful protesters beaten and students, faculty and administrators targeted by violent, hate-driven attacks,” Thaqi said. “Such hatred and suppression have no place at the University of Michigan, especially on a campus that prides itself on a rich history of student activism. This is why my administration and others are advocating for an ex officio
student position on the Board of Regents, a standard practice across all other public Big Ten institutions.” Thaqi said the student body needed a voice on the board to help address significant issues for students, including finding living spaces and affording food. “Students are finding it increasingly difficult to afford to live on our campus,” Thaqi said, “While we are happy to see the University housing projects in progress, students will not feel the relief from these measures for years to come. Beyond housing, a large proportion of our students are also struggling with food insecurity due to rising prices and a lack of affordable grocery stores near our campus.” Ono encouraged Thaqi’s efforts and the current CSG administration’s communication
with the board. He said conversations between CSG and University leadership would help the institution mitigate some of the problems Thaqi addressed. “I think that kind of rapport is incredibly important between administration and students,” Ono said. “Let’s keep talking about how the University can support those very innovative efforts.” Regent Paul W. Brown (D) followed Ono’s statement by saying the issues Thaqi brought up were important but may not be solved in the specific ways Thaqi’s administration had suggested. “Some of the solutions may not be exactly as you envision initially,” Brown said. “But I think they all deserve attention and solutions.”
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ADMINISTRATION
UMich allegedly considering moving some LSA departments to North Campus LSA faculty concerned over potential move for physics, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences departments
MARISSA CORSI Daily News Editor
In an LSA faculty meeting Feb. 3, a resolution was presented to attendees expressing concern over a widespread rumor: The University of Michigan administration may consider moving the Department of Chemistry from Central Campus to North Campus. After hearing of the potential proposal to move the department as part of Campus Plan 2050, associate history professor John Carson posed both his resolution and an introductory letter. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Carson alleged the LSA departments potentially moving to North Campus have expanded to include the earth and environmental sciences, physics and astronomy departments. Carson alleged that LSA Dean Rosario Ceballo confirmed the rumors at the meeting after consulting higher University administration. “The dean of LSA substantiated most of it at the LSA faculty meeting,” Carson said. “The upper administration … confirmed three of these appointments, three of the moves: physics, chemistry and earth and environmental sciences.” When asked about the moves, Ceballo reaffirmed the importance of a liberal arts education in an email to The Daily, writing that LSA’s Central Campus locations allow students, faculty and staff to
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participate in interdisciplinary collaborations. “Our central campus spaces are designed to encourage purposeful interaction and allow students and faculty to move between classes and labs with ease, to explore subjects like Shakespeare, organic chemistry, developmental psychology, and more,” Ceballo wrote. “Recognizing the critical role of the sciences, we are equally committed to providing state-of-the-art labs and research facilities that support our faculty to push the boundaries of discovery—all within steps of the classrooms where they teach and inspire the next generation.” In his letter, Carson explained that moving natural science departments to North Campus could be detrimental to students and researchers, claiming the plan would disrupt interdisciplinary work. Carson told The Daily he feels the ability to engage in interdisciplinary projects is more important now than ever. “In this intensely interdisciplinary moment, when most of the important issues we deal with have technical matters, matters involving the hard sciences, the biological sciences, the social sciences and the humanities — think about climate change, think about (artificial intelligence) — it seems to be the completely wrong moment to imagine pulling that apart rather than trying to intensify the kinds of connections,” Carson said.
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In an interview with The Daily, LSA sophomore Jackson Jonker, the LSA Student Government Academic Affairs Committee chair, said students would lose key opportunities and resources to pursue collaborative learning if departments were separated. “I think being in interdisciplinary studies allows students to have a wide breadth of academic learning and academic abilities,” Jonker said. “This university right now does an excellent job providing those opportunities for students to be well-versed in a wide range of academic affairs, which is absolutely fantastic. But with this plan so far, I think students and faculty will lose that ability to work and have the continuity of resources and academics within different departments.” Campus Plan 2050 features the Campus Connector, a proposed transportation network including an automated transit system and high-capacity bus routes that would serve the Central, North and Medical campuses. The plan faced community backlash for running through parts of the Nichols Arboretum, leaving the route over the Huron River Valley undetermined. Jonker said although the transit system could facilitate easier travel between the campuses, he worries new students would struggle to engage with the course material as a result of the change.
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