At a time when it sometimes feels as if the whole world is going to hell, I realize that when I leave Madison for good this summer I will be leaving it in surprisingly capable hands. For all we complain about Associated Students of Madison, our quirky city government and the occasional overzealous activist, Madison as a whole has also proved a certain resilience and uncommon sense that seems to outlast its less credible moments.
Just in the last few years, the Madison city and student communities have navigated some rather challenging crossroads. Defending its seg-fee system, UW-Madison ended up facing the U.S. Supreme Court. Deciding to commit to a downtown arts center, the city has faced severe criticism. Amid growing frustration in the student body, parts of our seg-fee process faced a student referendum. After a rather poor record of crowd control, Madison police faced an increasingly combative relationship with students. And while coming to terms with and producing criticism of America's war on Iraq, the Madison community faced inner divisions and an increasingly nationalistic dialogue on a larger scale.
Sometimes things went rather awkwardly. That schizophrenic-looking building on upper State Street that will someday be the Overture Center is visual proof. Between trying to save an historic fa??ade, condemning some favorite State Street businesses and spending ridiculous amounts of money on a project that many people still resent, Madison has ended up with one incredibly bizarre looking piece of architecture. And let's just be honest-that dome is really, really ugly.
Enough of the time, however, things seem to work out after an initially bumpy start. This was the year in which Madison police swung between extreme paranoia during the U.S. Conference of Mayors, grand delusion immediately preceding Halloween and temporary but total inadequacy during the Halloween riot. In a hopeful turn-of-the-tide at the Mifflin Street block party last weekend, though, they seemed to reach a relatively happy medium. If the police can maintain this past weekend's standard, Madison will be a much better place-and their performance this weekend gives me renewed hope.
The Madison community will, however, continue to face new challenges next year and they will continue to face the legacy of years before.
Things are hardly perfect. In particular, Madison remains troubled when it comes to embracing diversity-and this one major issue is likely to dog the community for years to come.
The city must own up to its own difficulties with diversity, reaching out to communities that literally live on the margins of Madison. The gap between our utopian self-image as a progressive city and the reality of ghettoized communities on the south and east sides must be resolved someday soon.
And as another spring semester draws to an end, it marks another year in which diversity issues seemed to take a backseat at UW. The number of exceptional minority students that are made to feel uncomfortable is doubly appalling-partly because the overall number of students from such backgrounds is low, but especially because the percentage of those students that feel unwelcome is so high. One of UW's greatest challenges will continue to be to address diversity in a serious way, learning to treat it less as a novelty and more as a way of life. This will mean looking beyond mere recruitment strategies and addressing the implications of a diverse student body-looking, for instance, at the ways in which inequalities between students of different backgrounds shape individual student experiences.
We must also learn to recognize and nurture the diversity international students bring to campus. For all UW's talk of encouraging diversity, its recent decision to charge international students for their own surveillance under Student Exchange and Visitor Information System is shockingly insensitive. It will be up to the entire student body next year to rally with international students and convince the university to implement a more fair system.
So do an old columnist a favor next year: Keep it up. Stand up against targeting international students to cover the SEVIS fee, keep up the critical dialogue and try to make sure you water my plants once or twice a week. And remember that I will be somewhere in Japan, wishing you all the best and missing this little city terribly.
