Despite the dissolution of the UW-Madison Division of Student Affairs, the shift of Plan 2008 initiatives to the Provost's Office will not result in the initiatives \get[ting] lost in the cracks,"" said UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley.
Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Paul Barrows announced his planned leave of absence for an undetermined period of time Nov. 4. This prompted a reorganization of the UW-Madison Student Affairs area into the administrative hierarchy that existed before 1999, when the Division of Student Affairs came into existence.
""The pieces are going back to where they were originally,"" Wiley said.
Many students are worried this reorganization will cause Plan 2008 initiatives to be lost now that programs like Posse, a project that recruits ""talented and diverse high school students"" to prepare them for the college process and leadership in the workforce, will be moved to the Provost's Office and ""[will not] have the historical background for why those initiatives were started,"" according to Roberto Paredes, a UW-Madison senior and Multicultural Student Center executive member.
""They did this without necessarily consulting the students on campus. This is something that ASM should really be looking into, it being a student governance issue,"" Paredes said. ""I think putting Plan 2008 in the Provost's Office is like shelving the plan.""
Walter Lane, assistant dean of the School of Education and member of the Graduate and Professional Student Issues Working Group for Plan 2008, directs the Posse program and will now report to Vice Chancellor for Administration Darrell Bazzell as his Bascom contact instead of Barrows, Wiley said. ""Otherwise, nothing changes.""
Bernice Durand, UW-Madison associate vice chancellor for diversity and climate and co-author of Plan 2008 agreed.
""By no means is Plan 2008 in limbo,"" Durand said. ""In fact, I am just finishing up the annual report for the Diversity Oversight Committee, with the co-chair of that committee, and a brief report on Plan 2008.""
However, student opinion on the plan's effectiveness differed from UW-Madison faculty views.
""Thus far [Plan 2008] has not been very successful in terms of numbers,"" Paredes said. ""Retention rates are essentially the same. The number of students of color at UW-Madison has improved only marginally.""
The undergraduate enrollment of all minorities was 2,469 students in the 1998-'99 school year, according to the Plan 2008 Web site, but is 3,770 students for the fall 2004 semester, according to WiscInfo's Data Digest. However, overall undergraduate enrollment has increased since 1999.
In response to this lag in diversification of the UW-Madison campus, Durand said she thinks ""we have a really good handle on building the infrastructure for things that haven't been going as well.""
Wiley stressed UW-Madison faculty regards Plan 2008 as a paramount issue for the campus.
""Plan 2008 is a very important, high priority plan for us and we're pretty much on track with it and I don't want to miss one step, one beat in the progress we're making,"" Wiley said. ""I think we've got everything organized and reordered in a way that absolutely nothing on a day-to-day basis will change. That's why we did it this way.""
