Facing rising enrollment, housing shortages and mounting graduate worker concerns, the University of Alaska Board of Regents spent the week advancing major construction projects, reviewing tuition increases and hearing student calls for health insurance stability. 

Mushers across Alaska convened this February to compete in a particularly demanding iteration of the Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race. Following a new approximately 750 mile course, contestants battled a variety of weather, trail, and dog related challenges.

A lawsuit filed in state court against the University of Alaska in January claims the institution mishandled a Title IX discrimination investigation, harming a University of Alaska Fairbanks grad student’s professional life, emotional and psychological well-being.  

The case points to a larger theme of Title IX violations within the UA system, referencing the 2017 finding by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which determined through a four-year compliance review that UA violated Title IX in its response to sexual harassment complaints, including complaints of sexual assault and sexual violence and failing to protect its students and staff from discrimination on the basis of sex.  

Title IX is a federal civil rights law that prevents sex discrimination in education. It covers all behaviors within university programs and activities. 

Last Tuesday, University of Alaska President Pat Pitney presented the system’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget to the House Finance University of Alaska Subcommittee, emphasizing institutional stability, workforce development, compensation shortfalls, continued investment in research, and a pending unionization vote involving thousands of nonunion employees.

UAF’s track and field athletes practicing on the indoor track in the student recreation center has become a topic of concern for some Student Recreation Center, or SRC, members. According to director of the SRC Mark Oldmixon, the team has utilized the track for the last three winters. 

A campus walkout on Friday Jan. 30 drew about 110 participants during its peak protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, citing concerns about deportations, deaths tied to ICE operations and immigration enforcement.

Former Rep. Mary Peltola kicked off her campaign to unseat current Sen. Dan Sullivan in Fairbanks last Tuesday in a spacious and stunning log cabin at Trail Breakers Kennel with an interesting twist on her politically moderate messaging.

Cold weather be damned, Fairbanks residents took to the streets three times in the last few weeks to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on Jan. 9 Jan. 20 and Jan 25.  Chants cut through the cold air, “No hate. No fear. Immigrants are welcome here!” 

University of Alaska Fairbanks student Graham Granger was arraigned in Rabinowitz Courthouse last week on charges of criminal mischief after he destroyed another student’s artwork in the UAF Fine Arts Gallery on the Troth Yeddha’ campus.

University of Alaska Fairbanks leaders and community partners outlined funding priorities, budget challenges and advocacy strategies during the Chancellor’s Legislative Kickoff on Thursday, Jan. 15, as the Alaska Legislature prepares for the 2026 session.

On Tuesday, January 13, University of Alaska Fairbanks undergraduate student Graham Granger was detained after he had been found “ripping artwork off the walls and eating it in a reported protest,” according to the UAF police department. Granger was chewing and spitting out images pinned to the wall; this artwork was made by Masters of Fine Arts student Nick Dwyer in collaboration with artificial intelligence. Granger claimed that he destroyed the artwork because it was AI generated, according to the report by university police. Police estimated that at least 57 of the 160 images up on the wall were ruined. Granger was arrested for criminal mischief in the 5th degree and booked at the Fairbanks Correctional Center.

Fire alarms in the Ernest Gruening Building, which houses the School of Education and College of Liberal Arts, wailed on December 9 because of a broken sprinkler head. Students and faculty had to exit the building into the minus 21 degrees Fahrenheit weather.

Maintenance worker Austin Beasley stood outside a main entrance where the ground was covered in ice. Water flooded out from the third floor of the building—the ground floor—onto the pavement outside.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks’ approximately 200 international students and faculty face a maelstrom of new federal pressures under President Trump regarding visas, increased policing, and squashed political expression that have left many concerned about their future in the United States. 

“The simple fact that you might be thrown out of the country because you were partisan online, it’s kind of insane,” said Victor Devaux-Chupin, a French glaciological Ph.D. student with the Geophysical Institute at UAF. “Like, which other country that we consider, as you know, democratic, does that.”

On Nov. 12 University of Alaska Fairbanks announced the reorganization of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). It came as a shock to both CTL staff and the faculty who use them for a wide range of support services.

Over 120 faculty and teaching staff signed a letter to leadership expressing “significant concern, frustration, and outrage regarding the recent restructuring.”

Three photographers affiliated with the University of Alaska Fairbanks will have their work featured in “Alaska Positive 2025,” a statewide juried exhibition that opened in Juneau on Dec. 5, 2025, and will travel to museums across Alaska for the next two years. Now in its 55th year, “Alaska Positive” aims to “encourage the practice of photography as an art form in Alaska,” celebrating the central role of Alaskan photographers in shaping the state’s visual culture.

Alaska Climate Specialist Rick Thoman sat down with The Sun Star to discuss Fairbanks’ recent warm weather and seasonal patterns in our land of extremes.  

Over most of Alaska, including Fairbanks, it has been a mild fall season with fairly low amounts of snow, though Fairbanks had one of the wettest Octobers on record. “The vast majority of that precipitation at valley level came as rain,” he said.

UAF’s ceramics studio filled with the sounds of clattering platters and the homely smell of turkey last Tuesday as students, faculty and art alumni gathered for the annual kiln-cooked turkey potluck. This decades-old campus tradition continues to draw a crowd year after year.

After financial turmoil, staff furlough Northern Center squares its debts with help from the Alaska conservation foundation and ‘night for the north’ event

The Northern Alaska Environmental Center is moving forward with a recovery plan after paying off debts following near financial ruin. At the beginning of September, following a separation with their executive director, board members said they discovered there was not enough funds for payroll. This led to the furloughing of the entire staff and pausing on all programs.

Community members, farmers, and Indigenous food advocates gathered Nov. 22 at the University of Alaska Fairbanks for a town hall on food security as the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, funding becomes increasingly uncertain and local food systems face growing pressures.

Organized by Concerned Residents of Interior Alaska and co-sponsored by UAF’s Office of Sustainability, Resource Management Society, and the Alaska Farmers Market Association, the town hall featured a panel followed by breakout sessions focused on strengthening Fairbanks’ culturally rooted food systems.