The University of Minnesota will boost police staffing, re-evaluate access to its buildings and experiment with adding turnstiles to a dormitory as it prepares for the upcoming school year.
University of Minnesota takes steps to boost campus safety
Public safety was a talking point at the Legislature, and the U received additional funding for those programs.
July 12, 2023 at 5:30PM
The changes are part of a broader effort to respond to safety concerns at each of the university's five campuses before 58,000 students return in August.
"We are working hard to ensure that they know when they step foot on campus that they should feel a sense of safety, in every sense of the word, and know where to go for information," Myron Frans, the university's senior vice president for finance and operations, told the U's Board of Regents in a meeting Wednesday.
The university has campuses in the Twin Cities, Rochester, Duluth, Crookston and Morris.
Regents frequently hear from students, parents and lawmakers who are concerned about safety on university property and in the neighborhoods surrounding the Twin Cities campus, primarily the Dinkytown area of Minneapolis. Public safety was a talking point at the Legislature, and some lawmakers said they needed the U to do more to improve safety to justify giving it a funding boost. The budget package included an additional $10 million to focus on safety efforts at the U over the next two years.
Frans told regents that U staff plan to use some of that money to increase police staffing, including bringing on an additional police dog unit, and to cover the costs of vehicles, cameras, radios, card readers that provide access to buildings, and other supplies.
The university is working to refresh its analysis of which buildings on the Twin Cities campus should be open to the public and which should have limited access, Frans said.
He said the U will also experiment with adding turnstiles to the Pioneer Hall dormitory on the Twin Cities campus to boost security.
"There is this tension," he said, adding that the U is trying to balance access to public buildings such as libraries and museums with the safety of students and employees.
The governor said it may be 2027 or 2028 by the time the market catches up to demand.
