Aspiring to emphasize the needs of students on campus, Abdulaziz Mohamed and Samiat Ajibola announced their candidacy for student body president and vice president in the upcoming undergraduate student government elections.
Mohamed, a second-year student and presidential candidate, is currently the federal government coordinator for the Minnesota Student Association (MSA) Government and Legislative Affairs Committee. Ajibola, a third-year student and vice presidential candidate, is the president of the Black Student Union and the MSA forum liaison of the African Student Association.
Mohamed and Ajibola are the only candidates running for the two positions. Last year, four pairs of candidates ran campaigns for the leadership roles. Students can vote in the undergraduate student government elections between March 22 and March 26.
As a central part of their campaign, Mohamed and Ajibola said they will focus on addressing student food and housing insecurity, mental health and police accountability within their first semester.
“Ultimately we decided to run because we believe that the University, and MSA in particular, can do better and be better for students,” Mohamed said. “Our University quite frankly has fallen short in meeting the basic needs of students.”
Mohamed and Ajibola said that they will hold the University accountable for meeting these needs.
“We don’t want to end with just having a conversation, but to provide concrete steps to put an action plan in place and ensure that the voices of students are not only heard but that it’s taken into account to change a lot of the systems that this University has been living in for the past hundreds of years,” Ajibola said.
Police accountability is another important component to Mohamed and Ajibola’s campaign. They plan to create equitable campus safety infrastructure to address campus safety concerns while holding the University of Minnesota Police Department (UMPD) accountable.
Their platform includes advocating for a full demilitarization of UMPD and the implementation of a Civilian Police Accountability Council, composed of University community members with oversight over University police.
“I think when it comes to UMPD in particular, understanding and finding solutions to the current [policing] structure of UMPD requires recognizing systemic failures embedded within the institution of policing,” Mohamed said.
When asked why students should vote for them, Mohamed and Ajibola cited their previous leadership experience and willingness to step up to the role of president and vice president during challenging times.
“We believe that [students’] voices are essential to the change on this campus and in order to create that change,” Ajibola said. “We would like to collaborate with [students] to ensure that this is a campus that is equitable for each and every one of you.”
praiseinterracialmarriages
Mar 15, 2021 at 7:22 pm
You appear to have a major chip on your shoulder, and have made no contributions to a conversation which you started to provide insight as to what you would like to see. Why don’t you run for elected office.
As a former student senator, I realize that referring to one’s commitments and interest in sharing responsibility for campus leadership provides a beginning to an understanding of some of the issues which are important to the community. Are you a student, alumni, or current or past employee of the University of Minnesota? What has you invested in in the race?
Do you have problems with people from African or from African-American heritage, or from the Muslim faith?
What might you say that would be of value to the conversation for the sake of posterity other than vaguely venting your anger — which may be misplaced on this issue?
We are constantly learning and developing ourselves, and we should be supportive of advances which young and older leaders care to promote. Your lack of a constructive dialogue, and your apparent bitterness, are something to be explored elsewhere, or until you have explained what might be done to improve the current way life as it is conducted at University of Minnesota and a universities, colleges, corporations and non-profits, and at local, state, and federal elections across the nation and elsewhere in the world.
I encourage you to offer ideas which might help the community rather than lambasting people and their statements for things which you haven’t discussed in an open and constructive fashion.
CapnRusty
Mar 15, 2021 at 5:39 pm
I’m sure you didn’t intend to convey the impression that you fail to understand that in an election where there’s only one candidate for an office, qualifications are irrelevant.
praiseinterracialmarriages
Mar 15, 2021 at 4:22 pm
I hope the MSA, in its devotion to mental health concerns of students, will work towards developing a balanced and humane required course for all students, in all disciplines, to understand the nature of what is sexual harassment, and how to work through difficult emotions and concerns with the least aggressive impact.
As a student, I had, eyesight and blood pressure issues. In one case, I was accused of sexual ogling (sexual harassment) because the young woman didn’t have the sense to ask me if I was having difficulties. She was a blurry object two feet in front of me. I was immediately found guilty. The dorm director didn’t care that a Boynton Health Services physician was willing to write a letter to explain my disability.
Within a month, the first woman’s friend invited me to a movie in the women’s lounge. I was first to be seated, and others trickled in five minutes or more later. The second young woman sat next to me on a sofa with two spaces. The movie was two hours long.
The young woman kept offering me popcorn, which I enjoyed. At no time did I make an effort to touch her, engage in lewd or offensive speech, or look towards to for more than a glancing moment. I had known her in another environment and had little interest in her other than being a good neighbor and shopping for chocolate that the chocolate shop where she worked across from the hotel on Washington Avenue before it was highly developed.
After two hours, I stood up and began to experience what medical professionals call “orthostatic hypotension.” Essentially, this means that when we quickly rise after being sedentary for a long period of time, our blood pressure is low, and the act of rising leads to blood, and the oxygen and other nutrients carried in it, falls to our lower extremities. Graying-out, or blacking out, or becoming very dizzy is common. I began to have difficulty seeing, and I fell towards the women. In an effort to keep from landing on top of her, I put one of my hands on her knee. She claimed “sexual touching” (again, sexual harassment).
Again, despite going to Boynton Health Services to find out what happened to me, and getting a promise from the physician to send a letter to the dorm director if one was requested, the dorm director found me guilty of sexual harassment a second time. I was evicted from the dorm, and a note existed on my file that for my lifetime, I was not permitted to live in campus housing. I ended up in a shanty rooming house just off campus in Dinkytown with legions of cockroaches and a foul odor which was not immediately noticeable when I moved in. I soon moved to another rooming house just off campus near a dormitory on University Avenue. It wasn’t exactly palatial housing, but appeared clean. When I returned to move in, I found a huge dead rat in my bedroom.
The following links to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), below, explain what is and what is not sexual harassment. Sadly, both the Minnesota and U.S. laws pertaining to sexual harassment only state that an action or statement must be “offensive or hostile.”
With over 300 million people residing in the U.S., with various mentalities, levels and types of education, and moods, just about anything can be considered rude and offensive.
One of the things that is required in a guilty finding is that the person complaining must make a complaint which is “reasonable.” Again, this is a vague description.
Greater than 50% of EEOC sexual harassment complaints between 2010 and 2020 were dismissed by the EEOC for complaints with “no reasonable cause.” This indicates to me that both the laws and policies, as they are currently, written are too vague; and the popular media presents cases, such as the complaint by a young woman in New York who complained that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed her by asking questions.
I will not argue one way or another about Cuomo’s alleged actions, or the demerits of the young woman not telling Mr. Cuomo to back off before, and instead of, going to the media; but the media presented the story before a responsible and enlightened administrative panel or judge heard the case and ruled on it. The effect was to foment a lot of emotional turmoil in New York and around the nation without planting the seed of justice.
As one who was raped on campus by a former girlfriend while I was sleeping (and the UMPD officer who answered said, “Barry…relax.. Don’t complain. Enjoy all of it that you can get. I will not take this complaint,” and passed me off); and as one who was molested by three adult women in job interviews and at a neighbor’s home while my parents were out of town when I was a sixteen year old very shy boy and also interviewing for jobs when I was twenty, I understand the need for anti-rape and anti-sexual harassment laws. This said, there are never stories in the newspaper or broadcast media about women raping and molesting men and boys.
The Sexual Violence Center in Minneapolis, and an organization called RAINN (https://www.rainn.org/), has shared stories of women who rape and molest men and boys. A Psychology Today article in 2020, entitled, “When men are sexually assaulted by women,” written by a woman with a law and medical degree, told of the reality of women raping men and how society is still of the mind that men can handle it. Two articles in Atlantic Magazine in November and December of 2016, also researched by a female feminist writer, talks about female sexual predators. (See, below, for the Psychology Today article’s link, and two links from Atlantic Magazine)
Society is currently heavily biased against men due to the over-effective work of the #MeToo Movement and National Organization of Women (NOW), whose work I general have a high appreciation and approval. The conversation needs to be updated, or constant stories about men who are accused need to be muted muted until just findings are determined by judges and administrators who are highly trained in this area of law.
A woman in England, who was prominent in getting the #MeToo Movement rolling, was effectively sued for over USD$1 million for libel after the man she accused lost his family, his job, and his respect and opportunities in his professional community. The man won over USD$1 million in a judgment against the woman.
It is time that universities and colleges at all levels around the nation require training in conduct for both women and men. It is important to do more than placing laws and policies presented on a website. Leaders, if they care to remain credible, my educate what is and is not fair game in a world where he have both the First Amendment and the problem of people not being trained as saints, and which clearly details what is expected of all people on campuses and elsewhere in society — both women and men — so that the dream of equality is both realized among the genders, and that people are not adversely affected by unreasonable accusations which lack in the immediate responsibility of people to state their objections to a comment and to not continue or engage in conversation with an individual — female or male, if it appears as that their conduct will be offensive or hostile, noting that people learned when engaged in a considerate and a firm manner.
We are now adults and must take responsibility for our happiness. We must learn to communicate in a civil and compassionate, and in a humane and responsible manner. Suicides occur when men are accused of sexual harassment, lose their places of residence, their jobs, their respect within industry, their families, and the opportunity to study at a given institution, and their abilities to concentrate on studies and work. We are still a developing species. All major religions have spoken about the need for compassion, mercy, forgiveness, patience, hope and love.
Here are links to a few EEOC and magazine articles on sexual harassment. More needs to be done, and this custom of vilifying men with developmental needs should come to rest. We each have problems, and we each offend one another from time to time. With this in mind, we need to educate, not vilify and condemn.
https://www.eeoc.gov/sexual…
https://www.eeoc.gov/harass…
https://www.eeoc.gov/statis…
https://www.eeoc.gov/statis…
https://www.eeoc.gov/statis…
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-bad-looks-good/201910/when-men-are-sexually-assaulted-women?fbclid=IwAR0HajDPOzlRJXnqnDPW2ATzNs2SMIbTZHfNsTlpIikgTWiaAPs_NGEk6wE
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-understudied-female-sexual-predator/503492/
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/12/the-understudied-female-sexual-predator-contd/509369/
Barry N. Peterson
Minneapolis, MN – USA
University of Minnesota, CLA Class of 1996
Former Student Senator, former College of Continuing Education and Extension (CCEE)
jenpetcar
Mar 15, 2021 at 2:59 pm
I’m sure you didn’t intend to demean the outstanding qualifications of these candidates by putting them into identity boxes. It just came off that way.
CapnRusty
Mar 15, 2021 at 2:36 pm
It appears that the undergraduate students at UMN realize that in this era of intersectional politics, it’s pointless to run for an elected office if you can’t check off at least a couple of favored identity boxes.