A crowd of more than 50 people gathered on Winona State University’s campus on Monday, April 29, for the unveiling of the newly named “Robert A. DuFresne Performing Arts Center.”
Dufresne, who passed away in 2015, was president of Winona State from 1967-78, and was president during the construction of seven buildings on campus, including the PAC.
The dedication event began with various speakers, and was followed by refreshments in the PAC lobby.
University President Scott Olson spoke on the impact DuFresne had on the university as a whole, and on himself.
“He was a friend and mentor to me, and he was also a hero to me,” Olson said. “It’s entirely fitting that we gather here to remember Bob DuFresne and everything he meant to this university, and at last recognize what he meant to us.”
President Scott Olson speaks about the impact Robert DuFresne had on Winona State University at an unveiling event on Monday, April 29. The event was the official renaming ceremony of the building as the newly-named “Robert A. DuFresne Performing Arts Center.”
DuFresne’s wife and son, Barbara and Jeff DuFresne, also shared comments at the event.
Barbara DuFresne spoke mostly about her husband’s time as president of the university, as well as his time with Winona State after his presidency.
Jeff DuFresne focused on how fitting it was for the PAC to be named after his father, stating that he “was always a great supporter of the performing arts.”
Barb DuFresne, wife of Robert DuFresne, speaks about Robert DuFresne’s time as university president during the renaming ceremony of the “Robert A. DuFresne Performing Arts Center” on Monday, April 29.
The proposal for the name change, which had initially been brought up in December of 2017, was written by three former Winona State faculty members: Jim Reynolds, a retired sociology professor, Gary Evans, retired Vice President of University Advancement and George Bolon, a retired physics professor.
“This is a long overdue recognition, and entirely fitting honor,” Reynolds said. “This is a legacy that I think should be honored and celebrated.”
Bolon also spoke on how fitting it was for the PAC to be named after DuFresne, not only for his love of the performing arts, but also because the PAC was the first building to be constructed during DuFresne’s tenure as university president.
Bolon concluded his speech with thoughts about DuFresne.
“We are all better persons for having known Robert A. DuFresne,” Bolon said.
Following the speeches, the building was dedicated with the unveiling of a new sign by Olson, Reynolds and Barb DuFresne.
A crowd of more than 50 students, faculty and community members gather at the newly-named “Robert A. DuFresne Performing Arts Center” at the renaming ceremony on Monday, April 29.
Winona State University held its first Sustainability Fair where students could talk to students, community members and businesses about sustainability.
The fair was February 27 and was held in the East Hall of Kryzsko Commons from 4-7 p.m.
Leah Dechant, a Winona State student and student worker for the sustainability office was one of the main planners of the fair.
“I always notice that students don’t really know much about sustainability,” Dechant said. “Or that we live in such a great area called Winona with all these options, they’re all local, organic, sustainable businesses, or companies that provide environmentally friendly options.”
She said the fair was designed to create a place for community members as well as students, faculty, and staff to get together in one place with a common theme of sustainability.
The fair showcased sustainable practices and ideas in and around Winona State.
There was no fee to attend the event and the booths were set up without a registration fee. Free snacks were also set out for people to enjoy and there was live music.
Jeanne Franz, a sustainability advisor and professor at Winona State said that Dechant reached out to people and businesses, and said, “No fee. If you want to come, please come.”
A banner was on a table being signed by people who came to the fair. One signature meant one pledge to live more sustainable.
Christie Hill signing to pledge to live more sustainable.
Franz said 12 years ago, Winona State signed the president’s climate commitment that by the year 2050, Winona State will be carbon free or carbon neutral.
This means Winona State will not produce carbon more than is being consumed by the university.
Franz said Winona State has begun taking steps toward this goal.
Dechant said that there are other things that she would like to see on campus as well.
“I would love to see more sustainable technologies, buildings and projects on campus,” Dechant said.
Franz said, “A few years back the students voted themselves a green fee which has helped fund the sustainability office including a full-time person, Nathan Engstrom, whose job is completely devoted to sustainability.”
One exhibitor talked about what you can do with certain spices and home remedies for ailments.
He had made his own kombucha that he shared, as well as showed his dried herbs and spices that he had collected and foraged.
Exhibitor showing table of home remedies.
Dechant’s table was handing out reusable water bottles and seeds participants could plant.
Leah Dechant (left) with fellow students handing out reusable water bottles.
“It’s not a hobby or lifestyle anymore,” Dechant said. “We need to change our ways.”
In the week leading up to and including Memorial Day weekend, Winona State University’s film studies department will be hosting a travel-study in which students are given an opportunity to visit Telluride, Colorado, and experience the annual Mountainfilm Film Festival.
Not to be confused with the town’s other film festival, the aptly-named Telluride Film Festival, Mountainfilm is documentary-based, curating nonfiction stories that explore topics like the environment, culture, recreation, political and social justice issues and more.
This will be the second year in a row for the travel-study.
The students and professor of the 2018 travel-study to Telluride pose in the town [Photo supplied by J Paul Johnson]English and film studies professor J Paul Johnson, who is co-leading the travel-study with former director of the Frozen River Film Festival Crystal Hegge, said he hopes students will learn from the festival and the course.
Johnson said a festival like Mountainfilm provides attendees with a chance to see a breadth of career opportunities.
“Novice-level understanding of film is typically predicated on people being aware of … somebody who’s hitting the headlines with big breakout blockbuster films …,” Johnson said. “What many people don’t understand … is that there are thousands and thousands of jobs in this industry at all levels …”
According to Johnson, Mountainfilm teaches people that film jobs burrow deeper than what is displayed on a teaser poster.
“There are people who are deeply invested in and working hard at the production of films,” Johnson said, listing grips, gaffers and sound technicians as examples, while also adding there are jobs in filmmaking that do not “necessarily involve being the director of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ or ‘Black Panther.’”
Another important concept students learn is even the best in the industry start at the bottom.
This concept was amplified during the 2018 travel-study to Mountainfilm when students had a chance-meeting with Barry Jenkins, director of the 2017 Academy Award winner for Best Picture “Moonlight.”
Johnson said Jenkins, like all students of film, started at the bottom and worked his way up.
“He remembered very well being at the start of his career,” Johnson said. “He remembered getting to go to a film festival for the first time, getting to meet a few directors, going up to a couple of others, tapping them on the shoulder, asking if he could have a minute of their time. He was superbly gracious with students and talking about that.”
Johnson said he believes those who attended the 2018 travel-study returned with a greater appreciation for filmmaking.
“I guarantee students came back awed … by that experience and really motivated by it,” Johnson said. “I think if you talk to any of them who went there last year, I’m pretty confident that that is what they’ll say.”
Film student Brynn Artley, a sophomore who took the travel-study in 2018, agreed with Johnson.
“I had a ton of fun, highly recommend the trip,” Artley said. “We saw a ton of different films in the span of three or four days. We wrote up reviews, we made blogs about it. It was just a lot of fun.”
While any student can register for the course, Johnson said film majors and minors are ultimately given precedence over others.
“We have a built-in selection system, in that it requires a 2.5 GPA,” Johnson said. “We do give priority to declared film studies majors and minors.”
Johnson added a vetting process would only take place if the course had more students than necessary.
Twelve are enrolled.
“We rank and evaluate applicants if we have more than 20,” Johnson said. “I would not at all be displeased if we had so many people wishing to go on this program that we had to make those kinds of decisions. That would be a good problem to have. But right now … I’m pretty comfortable with where we’re at.”
A caveat of the travel-study is the price.
Despite her taking the travel-study this year, Brittany Bluhm, a senior double majoring in English writing and film studies, discussed her past financial constraints and how they kept her from taking the course and attending the festival last year.
“I was hung up on rent and a lot of medical bills,” Bluhm said. “I was like, ‘There’s no way I can come up with $500 (the confirmation deposit) to stash toward the trip.’”
Senior Brittany Bluhm prepares for her first visit to Telluride by reading about the town
According to the brochure for 2020’s travel-study to Telluride, the cost fluctuates around $3,000, which includes tuition and student fees for the three credits linked to the program, as well as roundtrip airfare, transportation during the program, lodging, breakfasts and dinners, admission and event fees for all educational activities and the Study Abroad administrative fee.
The price is discounted, as well, as Bluhm said students taking the course will be volunteering with film screenings and other activities.
While she was unable to go last year, Bluhm said she understood the reasoning for the price.
“I think, because our film program is relatively new, I can understand why it’s maybe a little bit more expensive,” Bluhm said. “I anticipate the school will contribute more in the future as long as this trip keeps on going.”
According to Johnson, while more people would logically bring the price down, that would also mean jeopardizing the level of attention he is able to give in his instruction for the course.
“The price—the bottom line for the trip—would go down if we had 20 people instead of 12,” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t be opposed to having 16 students or even 20 as the cap … but it would be a different experience for me, a more complex one, and I don’t know if my students would get the individual attention that I know they will get with 12.”
Johnson said the price of the travel-study is lower than other travel-studies offered by the school.
“Any travel-study is an expense,” Johnson said. “Our travel-study to Mountainfilm is about half the expense or less than any of the international studies … Normally to travel abroad, earn three credits, over a period of one to two weeks, it is going to set a student back probably about $6,000. The price for our students, including the tuition, air travel, lodging, festival expenses, etcetera, is about $2,600.”
Johnson said he and co-leader Hegge do everything they can to keep the expenses as minimal as possible.
“That’s why, for instance, I cook,” Johnson said. “Because it’s a lot cheaper than having people eat-out in what is kind of a Tony-resort town where prices for that kind of thing are expensive.”
Cost aside, Johnson said he was satisfied with last year’s study and said he hopes this year’s is a repeat.
“There’s not really anything that we aim to do differently this coming year than we did last year,” Johnson said. “We just hope to replicate what we’ve done. It is a really nice experience for students to be able to do this … We have a really good partnership with Mountainfilm, and it’s a great destination for people to be at.”
Editor’s note: The content of this article may be triggering if you have been or are sensitive to sexual assaults.
According to Winona State University’s Annual Safety Report, cases of sexual assault reported on campus are down from six in 2016 to three in 2017. Chris Cichosz, Winona State’s director of security, Lori Mikl WSU’s Title IX coordinator, students apart of the Gender Based Violence (GBV) organization and the annual campus climate survey say it doesn’t mean the assaults are down.
Mikl said just because reports are down on campus does not mean that sexual assaults are not happening as often. Cichosz and GBV students agreed.
“I don’t think the prevalence of sexual assault is down at all,” Mikl said. “I just think that students are right now a little more leery of coming forward.”
Mikl said the decrease in reports could be because of a few factors.
Mikl said one factor is how reporting assault is portrayed in the news media. She said there is backlash for victim/survivors who are coming forward.
GBV students, Molly Sarbacker, Jacob Hansen, Tom Cameron and Emma Severson said they agree with this statement.
Mikl and GBV students also said some circumstances may contribute. Including: fear of coming forward, outing the aggressor and the stigma behind sexual assaults.
Molly Sarbacker, junior student a part of GBV, has been through the process of reporting through the university.
When Sarbacker went to the Title IX office, she had GBV coordinator Heather Gerdes go with her, a service that the organization provides to anyone.
Sarbacker said the process was traumatizing.
“I think that it’s a traumatizing experience to go through reporting and to share your story over and over and over again,” Sarbacker said.
According to Mikl, all decision makers and those on the panels that hear the case are trained in how to do so.
The reporting process itself is different for everyone.
A victim/survivor can report to security, a resident assistant (RA), a trusted friend, the police or others.
According to both Cichosz and Mikl, the way most victim/survivors report is through an RA or security.
Cichosz said there is always room for improvement in the process and he is open to feedback from victim/survivors who have gone through security.
“There is always room for improvement,” Cichosz said. “I think letting victims know what their options are, I think we can always do better at getting that information out there.”
Jacob Hansen, a sophomore student a part of GBV, said there is a universal “red zone” where most assaults occur.
The red zone starts in September and goes through Thanksgiving. There is an increase in reports, for many reasons.
Hansen said some of the reasons are the first football game, homecoming, welcome week and the warm weather leading to more parties.
The U.S. Department of Education may be making changes to the Title IX rules for campuses.
These would include more rights for those who are accused of committing a sexual assault.
Tom Cameron, a sophomore student a part of GBV, said he has high hopes for the future.
“We can’t really say any specifics so far just because this information is still in the works and we are still figuring out how we can go about this,” Cameron said. “But the future is looking good. We can say that for sure. We’re definitely brainstorming everything we can and all the options for right now.”
In order to better understand what life is like for a veteran in a college setting, Army veteran and Winona State student Sara Manning discussed how she feels in an environment where she is surrounded by younger, and often non-military-affiliated, peers.
Manning offered her take to help other students understand the difficulty veterans face in putting themselves through college.
Off in the distance from where Manning sat during an interview, a car backfired. Her eyes darted to its place of origin and she disappeared into thought. She was overseas again.
“Muscle memory,” Manning said, pressing her fingers to her neck to check her pulse.
According to Britani Woodworth from Winona State’s Veterans Affairs office, around 200 members of the armed forces enroll at the school following deployment. For many of them, this is a bookend to life-changing circumstances, and sometimes their readjustment to private citizenship is more difficult than they originally imagined.
“I would say it changed me for the worst,” Manning, 33, said, speaking about her deployment in Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. “I’m still in transition. I’m not the person I once was. My interpersonal skills have narrowed and I don’t really trust groups of people.”
Manning’s deployment lasted 16 months, which saw her working as military police, traveling to U.S.-occupied countries and detaining soldiers deemed no longer fit to serve.
“I’ve always been comfortable with discipline,” Manning said.
Manning (second from the right) and her unit overseas [Photo supplied by Sara Manning]Whether it is removing soldiers from active duty or doing school work, discipline is credited as one of her inspirations to go to college.
On if she is comfortable being in an environment where she is more world-weary than the young populace of a college campus, Manning said, “Deployment changed my mentality, and I think that affected my integration into the college community. My personal bubble is pretty small and it takes me awhile to trust people.”
According to Woodworth, who is also a student along with being a staff member in the Veterans Affairs office, it is common for veterans to have trouble integrating into a college community following deployment.
“There’s a hard adjustment for people in the military coming back from a deployment, (and) back into civilian life,” Woodworth said. “The normalcy of everything is really hard for some people.”
Manning also discussed how being a veteran influences her role as a college student.
“It is very… I don’t know if surreal describes it,” Manning said. “I definitely do not identify with anybody there, even the professors. So it’s very intimidating in a way that I just don’t know how to function …”
Along with the aforementioned difficulties, Manning referenced her son as an added obstacle in terms of her role as as a student.
“I also have a child,” Manning continued, “so that makes it even harder to (engage) people younger than me, because they assume that because I’m in a class with them, I’m able to freely able to use my time … and that’s just not something I can do.”
Similar to her earlier comments, Manning again discussed discipline and how it appears to be more instrumental to her than her classmates.
“The biggest challenge is having other people understand discipline,” Manning said. “Other students seem nonchalant with what they’re doing, and it’s kind of on a back-burner, whereas I’ve been trained that if (something) is going to get done and done right, it’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of effort and less procrastination.”
Manning elaborated her thoughts on procrastination and how it negatively impacts work that needs to be done.
“The more you procrastinate, the less chance you have to get it done,” Manning said. “Which should be obvious, but not to a lot of people I’ve seen so far at universities.”
Woodworth, too, discussed the difference in discipline she notices between veterans and non-military-affiliated students.
“When I got back from my basic and AIT (Advanced Individual Training) training … and started into school, I noticed … people are on their phones, distracted,” Woodworth said. “ (They) would (also) start packing up their stuff before the teacher was done talking. Like you can’t wait for them to finish their words?”
Perhaps because of her level of discipline, Manning remarked she sometimes feels out of place in an educational setting.
“There’s times where I definitely feel out of place,” Manning said. “I resonate more with the teachers than I do with the students, so that might tell you something.”
Woodworth said many veterans find difficulty in finding a sense of purpose in civilian—and by extension, college—life.
“When you’re in a deployment setting for several months, you always have a purpose,” Woodworth said. “You always have strict things to do and then when you get back into civilian life, it’s more laid back, especially going to college.”
Woodworth suggested feelings of alienation may be created by the individual and not their environment.
“I feel like maybe we alienate ourselves and we tend to feel like we’re more different than we actually are,” Woodworth said. “Coming from a deployment aspect, there probably is some that exists, because you see things you know other people aren’t going to see unless they’re over there … But when it comes down to it, we’re not that different.”
Despite being 33, Manning said she doesn’t always feel different than her mostly younger peers, but she does notice she comes from a different generation.
“I don’t feel any older than … a lot of students, but there are some aspects where I feel older,” Manning said. “A lot of these students feel things need to be handed to them, whereas when I grew up things needed to be earned.”
Manning drew from her upbringing as the root of her discipline and how it continues to reflect the way she conducts her work.
“‘Earn your keep’ was a big phrase or saying when I grew up, “ Manning said. “A lot of attitudes from my age to these new kids have changed significantly, and there might be an influence with the whole military career, because that’s an added disciplinary area that a lot of these kids won’t ever have.”
Though there is a gap between a veteran like Manning and those who are not in the military, Manning said she is okay being different in that regard.
“I’m always trying to adapt and overcome,” Manning said.
