BY PAUL TOSTO
Pioneer Press

Augsburg College doesn't do a lot of lawbreaking. But in early June, the Minneapolis school found itself facing penalties from the U.S. Treasury Department. The crime? Violating restrictions on travel to Cuba.

As fines go, it was minimal, $9,000 to settle accusations of violating the travel ban. But observers said it's part of a larger dilemma: Colleges can't meet tighter federal rules on travel to Cuba and have stopped most humanitarian and cultural programs there.

Minnesota has surprising ties to Cuba. Charles Magoon of Owatonna was Cuba's provisional governor from 1906 to 1909. Gov. Jesse Ventura led a 2002 trade mission there, angering critics of Fidel Castro. Eased travel rules in 1999 led to a barnstorming visit to the island nation by the University of St. Thomas baseball team.

But the Bush administration tightened travel restrictions in 2004, prohibiting educational programs lasting less than 10 weeks. Backers said some students and academics were using the educational provision as more of a short-term Cuban vacation.

Now only a few institutions in the country comply with the Cuba travel restrictions, said Regina McGoff, associate director of Augsburg's Center for Global Education.

Augsburg found itself in a retroactive snag when the Treasury Department, which oversees the Cuba embargo, informed the college that it did not have the necessary travel provider license for four trips between January 2000 and June 2004.

McGoff said all programs were legally licensed at the time by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, approval was given for all trips and Augsburg staff were in regular contact with agency officials. But when the records were reviewed, violations were alleged, and Augsburg decided it was easier to settle.

The educational trips are important because they help Cubans and Americans better understand each other, McGoff said..

"Particularly for Cuba, where information and travel have been restricted for 45-plus years, being able to go and first-hand see and experience what's going on in the country can inform people in a different way than reading articles," she said.

McGoff and others note that even at the height of the Cold War, there were regular educational exchanges between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

Treasury officials won't talk about Augsburg or other specific violations of the decades-long embargo, which is intended to punish Castro's communist regime.

Given the sanctions against Cuba, Americans are required to obtain "specific license" from the Treasury Department before traveling to the country, assuming the travelers don't fall under a "general license" category like full-time journalists or government officials on business, said Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise.

Failure to do so is a violation of U.S. law and can lead to civil, and in some egregious cases, criminal penalties imposed under the Trading With the Enemy Act, she said.

There is a special provision for academic travel, allowing universities to travel for educational purposes to the island, assuming their trip fits within the scope of the sanctions, Millerwise said.

Teachers and students, however, said the demands are close to impossible to meet given school schedules and a rule that only full-time tenured professors can accompany students. Recent attempts to change the law failed in Congress, with opponents arguing that loosening travel restrictions would only help Castro.

"They've virtually cut off the exchange programs in Cuba," said Wayne Smith, an adjunct professor of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. Smith was among a group of academics and others who in late May sued the Treasury Department, seeking to end the academic restrictions.

Johns Hopkins used to offer a three-week program in Cuba in January between semesters and a four-week offering in June, after the regular semester, to study health care issues in the country.

The requirement that programs last 10 weeks effectively meant students would have to drop out for a semester to take a course in Cuba or spend 10 weeks in the summer to do it, he said.

Hamline University felt the effects of the 2004 tightening almost immediately. The school had a Cuba program lined up for January 2005 focused on the Spanish-American War but had to kill it after the administration established the 10-week requirement.

The study abroad course "was all about giving our students a much more profound understanding of a crucial period in history for the U.S., for Cuba, for our region," said Kate Bjork, a Hamline assistant professor who is writing a book about Magoon and others from the upper Midwest who played key roles in the territories the U.S. won after the Spanish-American War.

"The government raised the bar so high we didn't have the resources to go forward with something that was educationally sound," said Bjork. "It has really nothing to do with Cuban foreign policy or wanting students to have some political view about Cuba."

Until the rules are eased, most universities won't be sending students to the island. "You'd have to have resources as an institution," said Bjork, "and also the guts."

© 2006 St. Paul Pioneer Press and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.