Faculty reflect on instructional impacts of Operation Metro Surge
The spring semester forced faculty to balance student safety concerns with teaching responsibilities in a way they hadn’t seen since the pandemic.
For three weeks, while Operation Metro Surge was in full swing, faculty at the University of Minnesota dug into the task of keeping students safe from potential U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) encounters. Alongside this effort, their mission to take care of educational responsibilities continued.
Now that classes have returned to normal, how do faculty reflect on that time? We asked a few.
Regina McCombs is a senior lecturer at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. In collaboration with the school, she’s focused her efforts on providing students with the necessary information to stay safe while reporting in potentially dangerous environments.
“One of the things we did before the semester even started was get together and talk about keeping students safe, especially if they wanted to go out and cover the protests or any of the things happening,” McCombs said. “We’d never done that before. We developed a whole safety protocol sheet.”
McCombs also led four photographers from the Minnesota Daily through Hostile Environment and First Aid (HEFA) training. This experience, she said, was a vital but unsettling learning experience for everyone involved.
“It’s different having students go through that and watching them learn about tourniquets and bullet wounds and all of these other potential things that the training is useful for,” McCombs said. “But it’s also, I think, a little off-putting to realize they might need to know something like that.”
For McCombs, faculty support helped relieve early-semester stress — even something as simple as sitting down and chatting with someone.
“It certainly feels more supportive,” McCombs said. “I feel like people are kind of pulling together, pulling in the same direction.”
As the semester resumed, instructors for many departments had to make last-minute changes to class logistics.
Communication studies Professor Zornitsa Keremidchieva started the semester with hybrid instruction. These changes reminded her of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was challenging yet ultimately meaningful, she said
“It was kind of a reminder about the variety of diverse students that we have and the different needs and communities that we pull into the space of the University,” Keremidchieva said. “So in that sense, it was a good moment of reconnection.”
Psychology professor Andrew Oxenham said he found the modality adjustments stressful.
“I’m concerned for our international students,” Oxenham said, noting that those students bring important experience and insights to campus. “Clearly, this is not a way to make them feel welcome.”
He said the psychology department has continued to focus on ensuring that faculty and advisers could communicate with students who needed support and guidance.
“If anything happens, we can reach them quickly, and they can reach out quickly,” Oxenham said.
As a foreign-born faculty member, Keremidchieva had to balance keeping herself and her family safe while also teaching and supporting her students. She added that this was the first semester in which her background became an important topic in the classroom.
“I have had to field more questions about where I’m from,” Keremidchieva said. “That brings a certain vulnerability. So I have had to manage those things.”
Despite potential risks, Keremidchieva said she remained committed to being there for her students.
“I did not stay home,” Keremidchieva said. “I came to campus every day regardless. I had a child who had to go into online school, so the situation impacted obviously my entire family.”
She also stressed the importance of giving her students a space to process recent events and the tense political climate nationwide.
“I think developmentally, this was their first political clash,” Keremidchieva said. “It was important for them to feel respected and to be given the breathing room to make sense of it all.”
