ESPN’s Kevin Weekes gives analysis of NHL games, but on Thursday he turned his attention to an assault in downtown St. Paul that involved a man being repeatedly whipped.

Weekes, who was in town for the Wild’s season finale at Xcel Energy Center, recorded the assault with his cellphone from his 16th-floor hotel room at the InterContinental Riverfront.

“Well, we’ve got a situation here in Minnesota,” Weekes says in a 2-minute video he posted on the social media app X, formerly Twitter, just after 1:30 p.m. “Breaking News Not Hockey,” reads the post, which has been viewed more than 1.3 million times as of Friday night.

In the video, one man is seen striking the other man several times with the whip along the edge of the Kellogg Mall Park at Kellogg Boulevard and Wabasha Street. The victim tries to dodge the whips while screaming for help.

After he is whipped a third time, Weekes remarks how no one is helping.

“I’m up in the room. I’m on the 16th floor,” he says. “There’s not much I can do. That guy in the white shirt … that’s not nunchucks, that’s a whip! Damn!”

The video shows the man with the whip grabbing his bike before returning and continuing the assault.

“He’s coming back!” Weekes says. “Damn! This is crazy!”

**Breaking News Not Hockey**
Just minding my business up in the room on 16th floor, all of a sudden I hear screaming, here’s the scene live – from
St.Paul Minnesota folks . #HockeyTwitter #HockeyX pic.twitter.com/RShoboDVdI

— Kevin Weekes (@KevinWeekes) April 18, 2024

After the final “lash,” as Weekes describes it, the man with the whip rides away on his bike. Weekes then asks, “What happened to Minnesota Nice? Wow!”

The video ends with the victim slumped over while sitting on the edge of a concrete planter. “Oh man,” Weekes says, as he zooms in on him.

St. Paul police spokeswoman Alyssa Arcand said Friday that officers were sent to the area just before 1:30 p.m. on a report of two men fighting, with the 911 caller reporting that one man was being whipped. The suspect was gone when officers arrived and the victim was uncooperative, Arcand said.

Police are aware of Weekes’ video and are “sharing the description of the suspect with our officers,” Arcand said.

“While this was a shocking and unusual incident for St. Paul, this was an isolated incident that we are actively investigating,” she said. “We encourage anyone with information about this incident to contact us at 651-291-1111.”

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The University of St. Thomas has informed employees it will lay off 26 staff members and keep 30 open positions unfilled, among more cost-cutting decisions to come, as it seeks to narrow a $10.5 million budget gap for the fiscal year beginning on July 1.

Rob Vischer, University of St. Thomas President, welcomes Lee and Penny Anderson to the podium as they announce the couple’s $75 million gift to the St. Paul school during a news conference in the Anderson Student Center on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2022. The largest-ever donation to any university in Minnesota will go toward design and construction of a shared Division I hockey and basketball facility. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

No academic programs or faculty positions were among the announced cuts.

University President Rob Vischer informed faculty and staff of the budget challenges in a letter this week and held a “budget town hall” on Friday at the O’Shaughnessy Education Center Auditorium in St. Paul. St. Thomas is Minnesota’s largest private university and one of the largest Catholic universities in the nation.

A spokesman for St. Thomas released a written statement Friday noting that while overall student enrollment has remained strong, St. Thomas was not immune to the “headwinds affecting all of higher education.” The eliminated staff positions represent less than 2% of the university’s roughly 1,500 employees, according to the statement, and an emphasis on small class sizes would be preserved.

Officials said across the industry, fewer students are enrolling in summer or “J-term” classes, more students are graduating early and the graduate school market has slowed. As more students enroll with increased financial need, some schools are competing by aggressively discounting tuition. Overall, tuition revenue at St. Thomas has declined over the past three years at a time of rising labor and utility costs, according to Vischer’s communication to faculty and staff.

The university has taken several steps to mitigate expenses, such as dipping into restricted funds and requesting an extra year of funding from a “quasi-endowment” fund to cover expenses related to its sports teams being recently elevated to NCAA Division I athletics. An employee benefits package will cut tuition remission for spouses to 50%, and pay raises in 2025 will arrive in lump-sum increases.

No academic programs are being eliminated, but Vischer’s letter indicated that St. Thomas would be “regularly reviewing our academic portfolio to determine if programs should be added or phased out.”

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A lot of ink has been spent on the Wild’s myriad injuries this season, all of which played a part in the team missing the postseason for just the second time in 12 seasons.

But on the day the players cleaned out their lockers and went through their exit interviews, the team’s injury issues were mostly on the back burner. The primary message from everyone involved — from the players to general manager Bill Guerin — was that the team just didn’t play well enough.

That, of course, was easy to see for anyone who paid attention to Minnesota’s NHL team this season. What was most interesting were the internal theories about why the team stumbled.

“I’ve always said in years past how much I would hate to play against us,” veteran forward Ryan Hartman said. “And this year, I don’t know if I could have said the same thing about our group and how sometimes we approached games.”

The team surrendered too many leads, and became fragile when opponents scored on them early, which happened often during a 5-10-4 start that cost coach Dean Evason his job. The penalty kill struggled all season, finishing third worst in the NHL. A handful of veteran players had bad seasons.

And while the Wild rebounded under new coach John Hynes — and in fact played winning hockey after Nov. 28 — they were never able to win when they were within spitting distance of an elusive playoff spot.

The Wild started the season aiming to win a first-round playoff series for the first time since 2015 — or getting over the hump

“We never got to the hump,” Guerin noted.

Instead, one loss spilled into two, two into three and three into a couple of serious skids from which the team was never able to fully recover.

“It felt like early on in games, we let up a lot of goals right away early in games, and I think mentally it fatigued us,” veteran wing Marcus Foligno said. “It felt like we were coming from behind and trying to play it from behind the entire game, and then the puck would drop and then you look back up and it was already one for them.

“That happened a lot, and too often early on, probably the first 20 games for this team. You can’t just play hockey like that. You’ve gotta be able to jump on teams and be that team that can play with leads, and we rarely did that. So, I think that mentally exhausted us. And then it got tougher, and practices get tighter, practices get more serious, and it just becomes a little bit harder at the rink and it’s uncomfortable.”

Foligno, of course, was one of many key contributors to miss substantial time because of injuries this season. The alternate captain played only 55 games and underwent season-ending surgery this month to repair core muscles. Captain Jared Spurgeon played in only 16 games before season-ending surgery on his back and hips.

Matt Boldy (shoulder) and Freddy Geadreau (ribs) missed games early, and Mats Zuccarello missed 10 games because of injuries. And after leading scorer Kirill Kaprizov suffered broken ribs in a Dec. 30 loss at Winnipeg, the Wild lost 8 of 9, erasing the gains they had made after Hynes joined the team.

Yet only Kaprizov pointed to injuries as the team’s downfall, and that was likely because he was the team’s best player for a fourth straight year — 46 goals and 97 points — and unwilling to throw anyone under a bus.

“Good teams don’t lose two in a row, and they don’t lose three in a row. They don’t let it slide like that,” Hartman said. “It happened too much. We gave up leads throughout this year. That definitely needs to be better.”

Guerin was pleased to hear it because, he said, injuries were a factor, but not the ultimate reason Minnesota missed the playoffs.

“When I hear that our players say that we were mentally fragile, I would agree with them,” the GM said. “And if they said that they weren’t competitive enough in the big games, … I would agree. We have to find our swagger again.”

The question is, how?

The 2024-25 roster is close to locked in because of long-term veteran contracts, and a looming $14.7 million salary cap hit — the remnant of buying out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter in 2021 — leaves the team with few options in free agency.

Health is one answer, but it’s always a crapshoot — and almost always an issue for every NHL team. The other is improvement. A better start. Better seasons from underperforming veterans. The team’s first training camp under Hynes. More fortitude.

And, Hartman said, a return to the identity the team has claimed, in good years and bad, for most of its 24 NHL seasons.

“I think there’s always another level that you can bring, and I think we do have that in our room,” Hartman said. “Obviously, no years are the same. Obviously things are going to look different each and every year. But we need to be a team that no one wants to play against.”

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As a Korean adoptee raised in North Dakota, Jennifer Weir tells people she grew up with no reference for her own Asian-ness. Her journey of self-discovery led her to an unexpected place — the traditionally male-dominated art of Japanese taiko drumming, a full-body performance experience that Weir uses to connect with a community of mostly female performers through her St. Paul-based nonprofit, TaikoArts Midwest.

The 2016 Knight Arts Challenge winners included TaikoArts Midwest, who received $30,000 to expand the impact and accessibility of taiko, the ensemble drumming rooted in Japanese traditions, with a monthly series of free pop-up concerts throughout St. Paul. (Photo courtesy of Knight Arts Foundation: Rich Ryan)

Tired of not getting her studio lease renewed every few years “because we are so loud,” Weir has big plans to take TaikoArts up a notch, so to speak, with new programming and its own dedicated performance center in St. Paul’s North End.

She’s fundraising $2 million, most of it to renovate and soundproof a vacant warehouse at 449 Front Ave., east of Dale Street, with the hope that legislation carried by state Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, will provide another $2 million through a cash appropriation.

Nonprofits seek funding from Legislature

It’s no small ask in the waning days of the legislative session, especially at a time when a number of St. Paul-based arts and cultural institutions are seeking both private philanthropic donations and public dollars to open new public-facing centers in the capital city.

They’re looking to state bonding dollars, the state Legacy Act and more to plant a permanent flag of sorts in St. Paul, but even Pappas herself has cautioned that this will be a difficult year to find state dollars for nonprofit efforts, given difficult budget forecasts a year from now.

“Everyone (at the state) is saying ‘There’s no cash for nonprofits this year,” Weir acknowledged.

Weir, who is featured in the 90-minute documentary “Finding Her Beat” on Amazon, is nonetheless hopeful that lawmakers will smile on her proposal, which she said would bring some badly-needed vitality and community outreach to a high-minority neighborhood lacking in arts organizations, fostering the sense of community she sometimes found lacking as a child.

“We have just slightly under a year left in our current lease (on Fairview Avenue), and the rumblings are they want to redevelop into more of a commercial space, instead of nonprofits,” Weir said. “One of the biggest taiko groups in the country has moved more than 20 times. You never really anchor into a neighborhood. It’s really hard to find space for taiko.”

Other arts groups

Among other St. Paul-based arts centers in various stages of planning:

• The Playwrights’ Center: This storied workshop and performance space for up and coming playwrights broke ground last fall on a new 19,000-square-foot center at 710 Raymond Ave. in St. Paul, an adaptive reuse of a 1913 building that will span double the organization’s existing footprint in Minneapolis. The center, which works with 25 to 30 “core writers” at a time and many others through classes, fellowships and residencies, was founded in 1971 and workshops around 70 new plays annually. A $19 million fundraising campaign launched last year and a new producing artistic director joined in January. The new center could open to thespians and their fans within the 2024-25 season.

A rendering of the Playwrights’ Center’s new home in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone sits on an easel inside the building on Feb. 13, 2023. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

• Minnesota Latino Museum: State Rep. Maria Isa, state Rep. Samakab Hussein, Pappas and others are promoting the concept of a museum dedicated to the state’s Latin experience, which would be the first in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. Organizers have scoped out a site on Water Street, by Harriet Island Regional Park and the Mississippi River, that would draw on the immigrant experience of the West Side. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, the St. Paul Port Authority and others have written letters of support to state lawmakers. “We have a request with the state for $10 million,” said lead organizer Aaron Johnson-Ortiz, executive director of (Neo)Muralismos de México. “We’re very happy to be seeing all these community arts organizations doing great work, and we’re excited for our museum, as well.”

• Hmong Cultural Center Museum: The museum, which opened near Western and University avenues in 2021, now spans 2,000 square feet following the recent addition of exhibit space. The new space showcases photos from the mid-to-late 1960s donated by the family of a former comptroller in the USAID office in Vientiane, Laos, and houses a newly-expanded gift shop and cultural artifact exhibit. The addition was made possible by a two-year direct appropriation of about $288,000 from the state’s Legacy Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, which also funded new track lighting throughout the museum.

Hmong Cultural Center program director Mark Pfeifer and executive director Txongpao Lee pose for a photo next to a display of story cloths and flower cloths at the museum on University and Western Avenues in St. Paul on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

• Wakan Tipi Center: Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi — the organization formerly known as the Lower Phalen Creek Project — plans a $13.5 million nature and cultural center near downtown Kellogg Boulevard, Fourth Street and Commercial Street, at a site located within the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, a 27-acre nature reserve. The goal is to showcase the Daḳota history, language and values in a building that will feature an exhibit hall, classrooms, ceremony space, community gathering area, teaching kitchen and teaching gardens. Construction was put out to bid around January, and the 7,500-square-foot center is expected to open in late 2025. The capital campaign launched in 2018 with $3 million in state funds.

• Victoria Theater Arts Center: Organizers behind the future community-driven arts center and performance space at University Avenue and Avon Street say they expect to reopen in August what had once been a silent theater, Prohibition-era speakeasy, cabaret and then retail storefront. A $6.8 million project began in May of last year and was halfway done by December.. The Victoria Theater Arts Center will lead an Earth Day clean-up from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Monday in the parking lot of the Model Cities building, as well as a youth-led music and arts festival, “Speak Out And Lead (SOAL),” from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on May 19. The latter is in collaboration with Springboard for the Arts.

Organizers of the Victoria Theater project celebrate the purchase of the building, which sits near the Victoria Station light rail stop on University Avenue. centered cafe, arts and performance space. (Courtesy of the Victoria Theater Arts Center)

TaikoArts Midwest: Weir said she has raised about $500,000 toward her $4 million goal, which would allow her to convert the empty warehouse at 449 Front Ave. into a soundproofed drumming center. Plans include a multipurpose event space for community activities, and the nonprofit’s strategic plan calls for targeted outreach to homeless youth, youth of color and the gay/lesbian/transgender community. TaikoArts Midwest, which was founded in 2016 and currently leases space at the Fairview Business Center, will host a Mother’s Day concert on May 12 at the downtown St. Paul Ordway Center for the Performing Arts. The show will feature renowned drummers from Japan, Canada and Minnesota featured in the documentary “Finding Her Beat.”

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