In a meeting last week, the Minneapolis City Council called on police brass to answer questions raised by our recent cover story, which reported that the department's Sex Crimes Unit had been cut in half, with the result that 9 of 10 rapes have gone unsolved this year ("The Case of the Disappearing Sex Crimes Unit," 10/17/07).
Deputy Chief Sharon Lubinski's defense of the department echoed Chief Tim Dolan's statements to City Pages: The staff cuts were necessary because of budget constraints and pressure to put more cops on the street.
Councilmember Cam Gordon responded that neither he nor his constituents wanted to sacrifice critical investigative follow-up for neighborhood policing. Immediately after the meeting, Gordon wrote about it in an online letter to his constituents: "This article and conversation have strengthened my resolve to resist the pressure to commit a larger and larger portion of our police resources to patrol," Gordon wrote. "Right now, 75 percent of our officers are assigned to patrol. I am interested in having an open, public discussion about whether that's the right balance."
Councilmember Gary Schiff asked Lubinski to come back to the council with numbers gauging the success of all investigative units that deal with violent crime. In a letter to his Ward Nine constituents about the article and the meeting, Schiff wrote: "It doesn't make sense for a city to under-staff investigative units in favor of claiming there are more cops on the street."
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Reform School
Minneapolis is abuzz with talk of school reform—but only one person is talking about reform school. You'll find that person over at Craig's List under the heading "BRITISH SCHOOL ROLE-PLAY!!!"
The post's author claims to be the "Headmaster's Secretary" at fictional St. Benedict's Academy in Minneapolis. The Secretary writes: "I have been to a few role-play schools in England and they are shocked that we have none here!"
The Secretary is looking for people "who want to experience a day in the life of British school in the 1950s." But don't expect to graduate with a degree; St. Benedicts is for "spanking enthusiasts."
The post's author claims to be the "Headmaster's Secretary" at fictional St. Benedict's Academy in Minneapolis. The Secretary writes: "I have been to a few role-play schools in England and they are shocked that we have none here!"
The Secretary is looking for people "who want to experience a day in the life of British school in the 1950s." But don't expect to graduate with a degree; St. Benedicts is for "spanking enthusiasts."
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Talk about the Sex Crimes Unit
In Minneapolis, with rapes on the rise, the Sex Crimes Unit of the Minneapolis Police Department has been cut from 10 investigators to 4--and their rape related arrests have tanked (see this week's cover story). The Chief of Police says he has a finite number of cops to move around and that he is accountable to community calls for cops on the street. Mayor Rybak says Pawlenty's Local Government Aid cuts are to blame. Meanwhile, for roughly nine out of every ten rapes reported to the police, there is a victim waiting to hear word of an arrest. What do you think?
Read the responses here.
Read the responses here.
The Case of the Disappearing Sex Crimes Unit
JUNE 20, 2007: A 12-year-old girl walks into a north Minneapolis high school saying she had been abducted five days earlier and raped repeatedly by a group of men she didn't know. At one point, she was raped in a black Monte Carlo by a man she can only identify as having a brother people call "Spud."
Sgt. Bernard Martinson, a veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department's Sex Crimes Unit, comes to meet the girl and hear her story. A vaginal swab turns up semen and is sent to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for examination.
The DNA matches 26-year-old Harold T. Davis, a convicted felon who had been pulled over by police on June 3 driving a black Monte Carlo. Sgt. Martinson finds Davis, who says his brother "Spud" loaned him a Monte Carlo in the middle of June.
According to a police report, Davis denies having sex with the girl and says he has no idea how his semen ended up in her vagina. He's in the Hennepin County jail on $150,000 bail, charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.
* * *
Conclusions like this one are increasingly rare in Minneapolis. Investigative units measure success by something they call a "clearance rate"—the percentage of reported crimes that lead to an arrest. The 10-year high for the Sex Crimes Unit was 57 percent in 2004. Last year, the rate fell to 26 percent—just 1 percent above a 10-year low.
This year, with data available through August, the unit's clearance rate is 12 percent.
Translation: For roughly nine out of every ten rapes reported to the police, there is a victim waiting to hear word of an arrest.
Meanwhile, the number of reported rapes in Minneapolis has been rising steadily—from 362 in 2002 to 453 last year—even as the number of reported rapes nationwide continues a decades-long decline.
Why rapes are going up is a mystery, but why they are not getting solved is not: The Sex Crimes Unit of the Minneapolis Police Department has seen striking cuts to its human resources. The unit has gone from ten investigators in 2002 to just four today, and two of the investigators are relatively new to the job.
Mike Schlitz, former president of the Minnesota Sex Crimes Investigators Association and a longtime sex crimes investigator in Duluth, calls the cuts "a nightmare."
The work of the Sex Crimes Unit is daunting and hardly limited to rape cases. The unit's four investigators deal with peeping toms, flashers, stalkers, and pedophiles. Then there are the registered sex offenders: The Sex Crimes Unit keeps tabs on more than 1,300 of them.
These four investigators are "the cream of the crop" says Lt. Mike Sauro, who ran the unit from 2001 to 2003, "but the burnout factor is going to hit. I've seen it already." When that happens, he says, "Cases start to slip through the cracks."
When Schlitz was working sex crimes in Duluth, his unit faced its own dramatic cuts. The result, he says, was easy to quantify: "If you have 40 percent of the investigators, you're going to get about 40 percent of the work done. It makes you shudder to think of the cases that aren't being worked."
A diminished investigative capacity has meant fewer arrests, which means fewer cases are being bumped to the prosecutor.
"This isn't CSI, where everything gets solved by the end of the show," says Hennepin County Deputy Attorney Pat Diamond, who adds that the quality of the investigations he's seeing is as good as ever—there are just fewer of them.
In 2004, the Sex Crimes Unit submitted 178 cases of sexual assault where adults were the victims. In 2005, the number dropped to 139. Last year, it dropped again, to 128. Meanwhile, say staff at the Hennepin County prosecutor's office, the numbers in suburban jurisdictions have held steady or increased.
For people who work with survivors of sexual violence, there is an added layer of failure in these numbers.
"For all kinds of social and community reasons, it is very rare for a victim to come forward and report a sexual assault," says Donna Dunn, executive director of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Abuse. "What I see this meaning is, on those rare instances that someone says, 'I'm going to report this,' the system is not able to respond."
Read the full story here.
Sgt. Bernard Martinson, a veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department's Sex Crimes Unit, comes to meet the girl and hear her story. A vaginal swab turns up semen and is sent to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for examination.
The DNA matches 26-year-old Harold T. Davis, a convicted felon who had been pulled over by police on June 3 driving a black Monte Carlo. Sgt. Martinson finds Davis, who says his brother "Spud" loaned him a Monte Carlo in the middle of June.
According to a police report, Davis denies having sex with the girl and says he has no idea how his semen ended up in her vagina. He's in the Hennepin County jail on $150,000 bail, charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.
* * *
Conclusions like this one are increasingly rare in Minneapolis. Investigative units measure success by something they call a "clearance rate"—the percentage of reported crimes that lead to an arrest. The 10-year high for the Sex Crimes Unit was 57 percent in 2004. Last year, the rate fell to 26 percent—just 1 percent above a 10-year low.
This year, with data available through August, the unit's clearance rate is 12 percent.
Translation: For roughly nine out of every ten rapes reported to the police, there is a victim waiting to hear word of an arrest.
Meanwhile, the number of reported rapes in Minneapolis has been rising steadily—from 362 in 2002 to 453 last year—even as the number of reported rapes nationwide continues a decades-long decline.
Why rapes are going up is a mystery, but why they are not getting solved is not: The Sex Crimes Unit of the Minneapolis Police Department has seen striking cuts to its human resources. The unit has gone from ten investigators in 2002 to just four today, and two of the investigators are relatively new to the job.
Mike Schlitz, former president of the Minnesota Sex Crimes Investigators Association and a longtime sex crimes investigator in Duluth, calls the cuts "a nightmare."
The work of the Sex Crimes Unit is daunting and hardly limited to rape cases. The unit's four investigators deal with peeping toms, flashers, stalkers, and pedophiles. Then there are the registered sex offenders: The Sex Crimes Unit keeps tabs on more than 1,300 of them.
These four investigators are "the cream of the crop" says Lt. Mike Sauro, who ran the unit from 2001 to 2003, "but the burnout factor is going to hit. I've seen it already." When that happens, he says, "Cases start to slip through the cracks."
When Schlitz was working sex crimes in Duluth, his unit faced its own dramatic cuts. The result, he says, was easy to quantify: "If you have 40 percent of the investigators, you're going to get about 40 percent of the work done. It makes you shudder to think of the cases that aren't being worked."
A diminished investigative capacity has meant fewer arrests, which means fewer cases are being bumped to the prosecutor.
"This isn't CSI, where everything gets solved by the end of the show," says Hennepin County Deputy Attorney Pat Diamond, who adds that the quality of the investigations he's seeing is as good as ever—there are just fewer of them.
In 2004, the Sex Crimes Unit submitted 178 cases of sexual assault where adults were the victims. In 2005, the number dropped to 139. Last year, it dropped again, to 128. Meanwhile, say staff at the Hennepin County prosecutor's office, the numbers in suburban jurisdictions have held steady or increased.
For people who work with survivors of sexual violence, there is an added layer of failure in these numbers.
"For all kinds of social and community reasons, it is very rare for a victim to come forward and report a sexual assault," says Donna Dunn, executive director of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Abuse. "What I see this meaning is, on those rare instances that someone says, 'I'm going to report this,' the system is not able to respond."
Read the full story here.
Just Shoot Me
When more than 1,100 members of the Minnesota National Guard's Red Bull Brigade returned home last month, they had the distinction of having served the longest consecutive tour since the war's start in 2003.
The guard members had each served between 718 and 729 days. The soldiers were conspicuously close to the 730 days a soldier is required to serve before the GI Bill kicks in, providing vets extra cash—between $500 and $800 a month—for school.
But there would be no money. 729 days was not 730 days, and that, it seemed, was that.
Then the Minnesota Congressional Delegation stepped in. Sen. Norm Coleman told NBC it was "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."
Retired Command Sgt. Major Tim Walz, now Congressman Tim Walz, made the most noise. He was instrumental in passing a resolution commending the service of the brigade best known as the first division deployed to Europe in World War II. Next Walz announced his sponsorship of the Support for Injured Servicemembers Act, which would amend the Family and Medical Leave Act to provide six months' unpaid leave for those burdened with an injured and unemployed soldier.
He struck at the GI Bill issue directly when he asked the storied congressman and war critic Jack Murtha to call General Richard Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, and make something happen.
Something did happen: Last week, Walz announced that Gen. Cody agreed to send a team to Minnesota to "further address and continue to rectify the situation."
Until the situation is completely "rectified," City Pages has a message for Minnesota college students (the ones who haven't been to the war and back): We declare the month of October "Take a Soldier to Class Month."
Somebody's got to support the troops, right? At least that's what the president says.
The guard members had each served between 718 and 729 days. The soldiers were conspicuously close to the 730 days a soldier is required to serve before the GI Bill kicks in, providing vets extra cash—between $500 and $800 a month—for school.
But there would be no money. 729 days was not 730 days, and that, it seemed, was that.
Then the Minnesota Congressional Delegation stepped in. Sen. Norm Coleman told NBC it was "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."
Retired Command Sgt. Major Tim Walz, now Congressman Tim Walz, made the most noise. He was instrumental in passing a resolution commending the service of the brigade best known as the first division deployed to Europe in World War II. Next Walz announced his sponsorship of the Support for Injured Servicemembers Act, which would amend the Family and Medical Leave Act to provide six months' unpaid leave for those burdened with an injured and unemployed soldier.
He struck at the GI Bill issue directly when he asked the storied congressman and war critic Jack Murtha to call General Richard Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, and make something happen.
Something did happen: Last week, Walz announced that Gen. Cody agreed to send a team to Minnesota to "further address and continue to rectify the situation."
Until the situation is completely "rectified," City Pages has a message for Minnesota college students (the ones who haven't been to the war and back): We declare the month of October "Take a Soldier to Class Month."
Somebody's got to support the troops, right? At least that's what the president says.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Better Red Than...
First they went after our children. Now they are going after our very red lips—at least those of us who make our lips “maximum red,” “true red,” or “positive red.” That’s right: they’ve poisoned our lipstick—this according to a new study by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.
Regrets to all you xenophobes out there—it’s not China this time. The cosmetics in question are manufactured right here in the United States. Some of the lipstick studied was purchased in Minneapolis. L’Oreal, Cover Girl and Dior Addict lipsticks topped the list of alleged lead-stick manufacturers.
We reached a woman at L’Oreal with an accent that suggested sophistication—French, perhaps? She gave us no quotes but sent us a statement:
"The L'Oreal Group is committed to upholding the highest standards of safety for all the products it makes and sells. Each and every ingredient used in our products has been thoroughly reviewed and tested by our internal safety team made up of toxicologists, clinicians, pharmacists and physicians.”
All told, more than 33 brand name lipsticks tested by the registered detectable amounts of lead with none of those products listing lead as an ingredient.
The FDA has established a limit on the ingredient lead—for candy. By that measure (0.1 parts per million), fully one third of the lipsticks tested by the Safe Cosmetics folks exceeded this limit, with the top offender, L’Oreal Colour Riche “True Red” coming in at 0.65 parts per million.
Glamour magazine reported in 2002 that women eat roughly 4 lbs of lipstick in a lifetime.
Surely women are buying and wearing most of the lipstick in the United States—but in this story the children still get their lead. Lead is particularly adept at traveling through the placenta from mom to fetus. And according to A 2004 Mintel International Group study, 63% of seven to 10-year-olds wear lipstick.
Pucker up, America—better red than dead. Wait…
Regrets to all you xenophobes out there—it’s not China this time. The cosmetics in question are manufactured right here in the United States. Some of the lipstick studied was purchased in Minneapolis. L’Oreal, Cover Girl and Dior Addict lipsticks topped the list of alleged lead-stick manufacturers.
We reached a woman at L’Oreal with an accent that suggested sophistication—French, perhaps? She gave us no quotes but sent us a statement:
"The L'Oreal Group is committed to upholding the highest standards of safety for all the products it makes and sells. Each and every ingredient used in our products has been thoroughly reviewed and tested by our internal safety team made up of toxicologists, clinicians, pharmacists and physicians.”
All told, more than 33 brand name lipsticks tested by the registered detectable amounts of lead with none of those products listing lead as an ingredient.
The FDA has established a limit on the ingredient lead—for candy. By that measure (0.1 parts per million), fully one third of the lipsticks tested by the Safe Cosmetics folks exceeded this limit, with the top offender, L’Oreal Colour Riche “True Red” coming in at 0.65 parts per million.
Glamour magazine reported in 2002 that women eat roughly 4 lbs of lipstick in a lifetime.
Surely women are buying and wearing most of the lipstick in the United States—but in this story the children still get their lead. Lead is particularly adept at traveling through the placenta from mom to fetus. And according to A 2004 Mintel International Group study, 63% of seven to 10-year-olds wear lipstick.
Pucker up, America—better red than dead. Wait…
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
MnDOT Style
Mike Fratto worked for the state of Minnesota for more than 30 years. He did a lot, but he never built a bridge.
Which is why he was confused when a letter from the Minnesota Department of Transportation landed in his mailbox in the Payne Phalen neighborhood of St. Paul. The letter came from the Office of Data Practices Compliance and it started by shouting, in bold, capital letters: "NOTICE OF DUTY TO PRESERVE ALL DOCUMENTS OR DATA RELATING TO THE I-35W BRIDGE OR ANY OTHER MINNESOTA BRIDGE."
The notice covered any "evidence...that might be or become relevant to any litigation that may arise out of the collapse of the I-35W Bridge." The letter was dated September 21, 2007—one month after MnDOT had been told to preserve all Minnesota bridge documents and almost two months after the bridge collapsed into the Mississippi river.
Fratto's address was on the letter, but not his name. The intended recipient was Sampson Bros. Well Co., a business Fratto was sure had never kept an office in his house or its immediate vicinity.
"I've been in this neighborhood for 50 years," says Fratto. "The woman who sold me this house had been widowed and both of them worked for the railroad. I grew up a half mile from here."
Fratto has followed post-collapse developments closely. "These things were supposed to be ordered within days of the bridge collapse," he says. "I used to be a data practices coordinator of a state department and I guarantee if something like this had gone down, we would have had those notices out as soon as possible."
Sampson Bros. Well Co. could not be reached for comment.
Which is why he was confused when a letter from the Minnesota Department of Transportation landed in his mailbox in the Payne Phalen neighborhood of St. Paul. The letter came from the Office of Data Practices Compliance and it started by shouting, in bold, capital letters: "NOTICE OF DUTY TO PRESERVE ALL DOCUMENTS OR DATA RELATING TO THE I-35W BRIDGE OR ANY OTHER MINNESOTA BRIDGE."
The notice covered any "evidence...that might be or become relevant to any litigation that may arise out of the collapse of the I-35W Bridge." The letter was dated September 21, 2007—one month after MnDOT had been told to preserve all Minnesota bridge documents and almost two months after the bridge collapsed into the Mississippi river.
Fratto's address was on the letter, but not his name. The intended recipient was Sampson Bros. Well Co., a business Fratto was sure had never kept an office in his house or its immediate vicinity.
"I've been in this neighborhood for 50 years," says Fratto. "The woman who sold me this house had been widowed and both of them worked for the railroad. I grew up a half mile from here."
Fratto has followed post-collapse developments closely. "These things were supposed to be ordered within days of the bridge collapse," he says. "I used to be a data practices coordinator of a state department and I guarantee if something like this had gone down, we would have had those notices out as soon as possible."
Sampson Bros. Well Co. could not be reached for comment.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Just Shoot Me
The Minnesota National Guard was a key component of the "surge" in Iraq. 2,600 of them recently wrapped up a 22-month tour. On paper, 1,161 of them were serving a 729 day tour, extended for the surge to 22 months. A 730-day tour would have triggered the GI Bill and earned the soldiers money for school back home. But the Pentagon's not paying. Deployments were written for 729 days, and that's that. Now some of the soldiers are speaking out.
The soldiers are "victims of a significant injustice" Minnesota Guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Kevin Olson told NBC.
"I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers," said 1st Lt. Jon Anderson, who explained to NBC that soldiers would have been getting $500 to $800 more each month.
More from the story:
Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.
Klobuchar said the GI money "shouldn't be tied up in red tape," and Coleman said it's "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."
Anderson said the soldiers he oversaw in his platoon expected that money to be here when they come home.
"I had 23 guys under my command," Anderson said. "I promised to take care of them. And I'm not going to end taking care of them when this deployment is over, and it's not over until this is solved."
National Guard soldiers, if you're out there, do pipe up in the comments section below.
College students, if you're out there, City Pages declares the month of October 'Take a Soldier to Class Month.'
Somebody's got to support the troops, no? At least that's what the President says.
The soldiers are "victims of a significant injustice" Minnesota Guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Kevin Olson told NBC.
"I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers," said 1st Lt. Jon Anderson, who explained to NBC that soldiers would have been getting $500 to $800 more each month.
More from the story:
Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.
Klobuchar said the GI money "shouldn't be tied up in red tape," and Coleman said it's "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."
Anderson said the soldiers he oversaw in his platoon expected that money to be here when they come home.
"I had 23 guys under my command," Anderson said. "I promised to take care of them. And I'm not going to end taking care of them when this deployment is over, and it's not over until this is solved."
National Guard soldiers, if you're out there, do pipe up in the comments section below.
College students, if you're out there, City Pages declares the month of October 'Take a Soldier to Class Month.'
Somebody's got to support the troops, no? At least that's what the President says.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Court Hears Convicted City Councilmember's Appeal
When last we heard from convicted City Councilmember Dean Zimmerman, he was making plans for prison ("I am hoping to be able to do some teaching while I am in"). Today, with Zimmerman already serving a 30-month sentence, his lawyers are appealing his bribery conviction in the 8th Circuit Appeals Court. Want to hear how that's going? You can listen to the oral arguments here.
Zimmerman enjoyed a reputation for living on the cheap and working hard (a handyman by trade, he was apparently doing carpentry work for extra scratch when the indictment was announced in 2006).
On the City Council, he had a notorious lean to the left--loyal to his Green Party. Zimmerman was the third City Councilmember to be indicted in under 5 years.
All told, he was convicted of taking $7200 in questionable cash from a developer who had a stake in Zimmerman's zoning votes.
Here's how Zimmerman explained one incident detailed in the indictment to MPR in 2005:
"I don't really know. I mean I... the guy showed up one time and asked me how he could help with the campaign and I said, of course, he could give donations to the campaign -- $300 limit -- and he said , well, he had already given that much. And so I said, 'well, is there something else you can do?' and I suggested that he might want to help out with the redistricting lawsuit.
"Of course, as you know, the Green Party people were gerrymandered in the last redistricting and we took that case to court and we're still trying to pay off some of our legal bills. He wanted to help with that and I thought that was quite reasonable. That's.... and, of course, I've been raising money for that all along from a number of people.. so it doesn't seem like anything unusual."
Avidor of Minneapolis Confidential posted an excerpt of the Government's side of the story (Zimmerman, the Government's attorney said, was "readily predisposed to take money in exchange for selling his office").
USA v. Zimmerman continues...stay tuned.
Zimmerman enjoyed a reputation for living on the cheap and working hard (a handyman by trade, he was apparently doing carpentry work for extra scratch when the indictment was announced in 2006).
On the City Council, he had a notorious lean to the left--loyal to his Green Party. Zimmerman was the third City Councilmember to be indicted in under 5 years.
All told, he was convicted of taking $7200 in questionable cash from a developer who had a stake in Zimmerman's zoning votes.
Here's how Zimmerman explained one incident detailed in the indictment to MPR in 2005:
"I don't really know. I mean I... the guy showed up one time and asked me how he could help with the campaign and I said, of course, he could give donations to the campaign -- $300 limit -- and he said , well, he had already given that much. And so I said, 'well, is there something else you can do?' and I suggested that he might want to help out with the redistricting lawsuit.
"Of course, as you know, the Green Party people were gerrymandered in the last redistricting and we took that case to court and we're still trying to pay off some of our legal bills. He wanted to help with that and I thought that was quite reasonable. That's.... and, of course, I've been raising money for that all along from a number of people.. so it doesn't seem like anything unusual."
Avidor of Minneapolis Confidential posted an excerpt of the Government's side of the story (Zimmerman, the Government's attorney said, was "readily predisposed to take money in exchange for selling his office").
USA v. Zimmerman continues...stay tuned.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Schooled!
The next time you see a college student, buy her a drink for putting our fine state on the map. A report just released by the Project on Student Debt ranks the graduating seniors of Minnesota's public and private colleges among the highest in the country for average debt burden carried into that jungle we call the "real world."
According to the study, 72 percent of Minnesota grads have student loan debt when they collect their cap and gown, and they owe an average of $23,000 each. That percentage won Minnesota the bronze medal for proportion of college students graduating with debt. Damn you, South Dakota and New Mexico (82 percent and 76 percent respectively)—we'll get you next year.
If you are looking to celebrate this news, expect the best parties at the art schools. At St. Paul's College of Visual Arts, students are leaving with an average debt of $48,926. At the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the average graduate load is $41,153.
Across the country, the Project on Student Debt reports that the average debt for graduating seniors in the United States went up 8 percent in the last year, while starting salaries rose roughly 4 percent. So don't expect much from these kids now that they are free from the shackles of campus leisure. They've busted their humps making Minnesota what it is and now they must rest—at one of their three jobs.
According to the study, 72 percent of Minnesota grads have student loan debt when they collect their cap and gown, and they owe an average of $23,000 each. That percentage won Minnesota the bronze medal for proportion of college students graduating with debt. Damn you, South Dakota and New Mexico (82 percent and 76 percent respectively)—we'll get you next year.
If you are looking to celebrate this news, expect the best parties at the art schools. At St. Paul's College of Visual Arts, students are leaving with an average debt of $48,926. At the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the average graduate load is $41,153.
Across the country, the Project on Student Debt reports that the average debt for graduating seniors in the United States went up 8 percent in the last year, while starting salaries rose roughly 4 percent. So don't expect much from these kids now that they are free from the shackles of campus leisure. They've busted their humps making Minnesota what it is and now they must rest—at one of their three jobs.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)