Here is a photo and what I wrote on the Hillsider blog. 

Students, community members march against racism

Or about sexual assault.

When I first read the headline, I thought it said enrage not engage.  I was thinking, "Holy Crap, how'd they piss her off?"

I marched, but left the rally b/c one of my bosses was sending me emails and giving me shit about meeting a deadline, so I missed the "confrontation." I heard about it later from a member of the community who seemed to think it was a very big deal and thought, sitting there, that there was a lot of anger directed at the chancellor. Also something not caught on this video: my friend said students, who were standing before the stage in solidarity with the speakers, moved away from the stage and sat down facing the stage when Martin was announced as the next speaker. A lot of tension there during Martin's speech. Not surprising. I walked both right ahead and right behind her during the march, and she and Dean Jack Bowman were yacking the whole time, when the march was meant to be silent and reflective about why we were marching. As we walked up Woodland, she and Bowman started complaining about how tired they were, how hard it was on them walking uphill.

Martin can't leave Duluth soon enough as far as I'm concerned. Earlier this year she proved that her own exercise regime was more important to her than the safety of her female students.  Her ego apparently know no bounds, as nearly every page of each issue the UMD alumni newsletter, The Bridge (whose production she oversees), contains a photo of her. She embarrassed UMD and Duluth by throwing a drink on an opposing women's hockey team coach. 

And her successful push to increase UMD's student population (and, therefore, the tuition dollars coming into the U system) has led to overcrowding on a campus lacking sufficient housing, and then when off-campus student housing skyrocketed and became an issue a couple years back, she was silent on the matter. When I taught there (during Martin's regime) we joked that if you wanted to go to UMD and lived north of Hinkley, the only qualifications were a pulse and a checkbook, brain optional. With a policy like that, you're bound to get the occasional ignorant idiots--like those two facebook racists--walking the halls with everyone else.

Maybe if less of her time was spent attending social functions and having her picture taken and more time interacting with her students, her priorities would be different. In the end colleges are businesses, plain and simple. And as chief administrator of a business, the bottom line of her job is to increase the University's bottom line. The customers--er, students--will keep coming no matter who is at the helm, or how he or she steers the ship.

Yeah, Chancellor Martin does like being the center of attention. I was taking pics of some literary celebrities in town for Split Rock a few years ago -- and somehow she got into the pics -- even though the policy of my magazine is only people in the industry for pics. I was a little irritated. Can't remember if we used the pics or not -- I think we did use one I got without her in it.