Spring semester for many in the Macalester community began with a heavy tone as students grappled with local and national news surrounding the increased presence of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Twin Cities called Operation Metro Surge. This has included thousands of detainments around Minnesota and the killing of two members of the larger Twin Cities community, Renée Good and Alex Pretti.
For some, the current landscape has led to increased feelings of fear, anxiety and loneliness, among other mental health concerns. In response, departments around campus are hosting events to support students while the federal government has stated that ICE officers are leaving the area as part of a drawdown of Operation Metro Surge.
The Laurie Hamre Center for Health and Wellness, including the division of Health Promotion, has been working to support multiple facets of student needs at this moment.
“Every day for us [at Hamre] is about supporting holistic wellbeing, not just mental wellbeing,” Tiger Simpson, director of Health Promotion and Sexual Respect at the Hamre Center, said.
In line with this mindset, the Hamre Center is currently hosting Respect and Relationship month this February, with added emphasis on consent and safety.
According to Simpson, the month includes conversations about, “what are we doing about consent and boundary setting in our relationships and the information we share? Who has access to that information? How do we support people who are potentially struggling?”
“It doesn’t mean [people] always are [struggling], but how do we normalize checking in with one another?” Simpson continued.
The Hamre Center has increased efforts to build what Simpson described as a “culture of reinforcing protective factors in mental health” in other ways. After the November 2024 election, the Hamre Center started placing health literacy information informed by Macalester survey data, such as the National College Health Assessment, around campus and in the Mac Daily.
The Hamre Center continues to offer its free counseling and medical services, Simpson said. They noted that gender-affirming care has not been impacted. “Sometimes [gender-affirming care is] impacting both physical and mental wellbeing, so [these services are] carrying on,” Simpson said.
Other on-campus groups are offering differing types of care. Chaplain Hannah Adams Ingram of the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life (CRSL) noted the CRSL’s recognition of “the way spiritual needs are integrated in mental health [and] emotional health.”
The CRSL has established practices to support student mental health and wellbeing, such as offering confidential appointments for students to talk to any chaplain, regardless of religious affiliation. During this moment, their programming focuses on doubling down on bringing students together. An emphasis on community building guides their work.
“We believe that community is what bolsters hope and what comforts us when we are downtrodden, what makes us sure we’re not alone,” Adams Ingram said.
For the CRSL staff, this has included keeping pre-established spaces open and accessible so that students have outlets to talk to faith leaders. Additionally, the CRSL has organized interfaith collaborations and created new pathways to connection, such as offering meals that double as meeting places.
“There’s a lot of meals that happen in [the CRSL] and that’s because we believe that people connect across food and that we can nurture souls by nurturing bodies,” Adams Ingram said.
Adams Ingram said that the CRSL helped plan the recent Monarca upstander training that was hosted by three religious organizations on campus. A dinner before the training connected students from the Macalester Jewish Organization, Muslim Student Association and Macalester Christian Collective, as well as unaffiliated attendees.
The CRSL is continuing to host meals for the greater Macalester community, such as an upcoming collaboration with the Muslim Student Association to organize a campus-wide Iftar, the meal that breaks the fast during Ramadan.
Recently, Lealtad-Suzuki Center for Social Justice (LSC) events put a similar emphasis on bringing Macalester students together during this time.
One event, hosted on Thursday, Feb. 19, was titled “When Home is Hard,” a recently revived LSC program focusing on providing a space for people to share what and how turmoil at home is impacting them and to learn ways to hold and manage those feelings together while attending Macalester.
“This event was about people who come from the Twin Cities, and also people who come from different states [and countries] coming together and sharing how they’re feeling, but also giving some context for other people who don’t know what’s going on in their home[towns],” Dyson Haaland ’27, a program assistant at the LSC, said.
The LSC provided the website for Support for Students Impacted by Ongoing Conflict, Natural Disaster or Displacement maintained by Macalester. Haaland said the LSC and students also shared therapy programs and coping strategies such as breathing exercises in the group discussion setting.
“I think taking the time away, especially from your phone or just even being in a group setting, can help your mental health a lot more than you realize,” Haaland said. “[We are] providing the space for someone to talk and just be heard and be listened to and be witnessed as another human. In this day and age, it feels like when everything is online, you feel so isolated. But I think community is a lot better than anything when it comes to dealing with any issue.”
While the presence of federal immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota decreases, efforts to support and fortify mental health will continue at Macalester.
“Right now, I’m proud of the work we as a whole Mac community are doing,” Simpson said. “I’m proud of the work Hamre and Health Promotion [and] Sexual Respect are doing. There’s always room for improvement, and then doing that, taking those steps together, will be what’s most impactful, because that’s how we change the systems, and that’s the long term impact we can make.”