The University of Michigan’s Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met Monday afternoon in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building to discuss how to respond to threats to the status of international students, potential threats to the integrity of Senate Assembly elections and the surveillance of students and faculty members by University administration.
SACUA chair Rebecca Modrak opened the meeting with a discussion on international students’ visa status on campus. Modrak said some faculty are working with immigration lawyers to ensure that there are resources available for those at risk of losing their visas.
“We have a list of immigration attorneys in Michigan that have been provided to us from different sources,” Modrak said. “There’s a group of faculty who are going to start going through those lists and calling and making sure that they’re accepting new clients and find out what their fee structure is and if any of them work pro bono.”
Modrak also said there were efforts by U-M schools to allow international graduate students to continue their work from abroad in the event of deportation.
“The Dean (of Stamps School of Art & Design) affirmed that if either of our two international students needed to leave the country, he would continue supporting them and make sure that they were able to continue their graduate work outside of the country,” Modrak said. “The School of Information also reported back to us during the meeting that they’re doing something similar, and I think there was another school.”
The committee then went on to discuss a notice sent by the dean of the University’s Medical School to some of its faculty members which stated any faculty with noted professionalism issues would be barred from serving on the Senate Assembly.
Soumya Rangarajan, assistant professor of internal medicine, expressed her concerns with the notice, comparing it to restrictions put on the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities in July 2024 after increased student protests.
“I feel that suddenly instituting this now instead of (going) through anybody, was kind of like what they did with the (SSRR) last summer,” Rangarajan said. “Nobody at the Medical School knows about this who’s in any level of faculty leadership. There was basically no due process.”
Rangarajan said she worried that very small infractions, such as occasional failures to sign documentation promptly, could be weaponized against medical faculty who have spoken out against University administration.
“This could be a slippery slope where a lot of different things could be called professionalism issues,” Rangarajan said. “I do think that it could slide into a place where 40% of the people who work in Michigan Medicine would be basically unable to vote or participate in faculty elections.”
Lucas McCarthy, director of the Faculty Senate Office, said the notice could justify the Faculty Senate stepping in to more closely monitor elections organized by different colleges.
“Historically, generally, the individual units have been in charge of determining their own elections,” McCarthy said. “But this raises the question of, ‘Should the Senate Assembly (and) Faculty Senate provide a little bit more of a guardrail for how all these elections happen within units?’”
SACUA then discussed the surveillance of students, faculty and community members by University administration. Modrak specifically mentioned a contract with the private security company Amerishield Protection Group signed by the University’s Board of Regents. Modrak said the company has been used to track student protesters, such as a University student who was recently jailed for being on campus in violation of his bond.
“(The regents) approved a contract, several contracts, with a group called Amerishield, which provides … plainclothes police officers and plainclothes security officers that have been tracking students on campus,” Modrak said. “This is how they knew last week that a student who was only allowed to be on campus to go to attend classes based on the conditions of his bond agreement was on campus. Somebody tracked him between classes.”
Modrak said students and faculty have expressed concern over the University’s installment of surveillance cameras around the Diag and Law Quadrangle and individuals recording students and faculty who attended a work-in hosted by the TAHRIR Coalition.
“Michigan ACLU students put out this open letter with concern about the surveillance campus on the Diag and Michigan Law Quad, and now on top of that, we also have these plainclothes officers wandering around campus,” Modrak said. “A few faculty wrote to say at the work-in they had seen a man taking photographs of people who were participating in the work-in a week ago.”
Derek Peterson, professor of Afroamerican and African studies, introduced a unanimously adopted motion to thank Modrak, whose term expires on April 30, for her work as SACUA chair.
“(Modrak has) defended students’ rights to protest against administration efforts to close down space for free expression,” Peterson said. “She’s pushed back against the institutional effort to make us neutral about the most morally-pressing matters of our times. She’s opened up collaborations with our nascent faculty union, which we’ve all benefited from. She’s helped defend diversity, equity and inclusion as core parts of what our University does. She’s encouraged us to see ourselves as human beings.”
Summer Daily News Editor Glenn Hedin can be reached at heglenn@umich.edu.
