This editorial board went over some of the biggest issues this year and looked back to see if there were any lessons to be learned.
Shared governance
When Chancellor David Ward went against the Student Services Finance Committee’s recommendation to freeze the Wisconsin Union and Recreational Sports’ budgets for this fiscal year, he inspired a snowball of debate among shared governance groups on campus that culminated in threats of a lawsuit between students and the chancellor.
Shared governance provides the opportunity for discussion among students, faculty and staff on campuses throughout Wisconsin. This opportunity is fairly unique to University of Wisconsin schools, with only a few other schools in the nation providing students an official say in the inner-workings of their education.
So while the chancellor does officially have the right to veto decisions made within the Associated Students of Madison, he or she should recognize they have the unique responsibility to discuss such matters with student leaders and value student opinions with significant weight.
As the incoming chancellor of the university, Rebecca Blank needs to realize ASM and other shared governance bodies make the decisions they do for a reason. While she will likely not agree with all of these decisions, she still needs to respect the authority these bodies are afforded through shared governance. Overruling decisions they make should only be done after much thought and deliberation with all parties involved.
This unique opportunity for shared governance unfortunately has the potential to pin university stakeholders against one another, as witnessed with the Union and RecSports budgets. Shared governance should be a benefit to the university, not a source of contention. In order for it to be so, however, all bodies must be willing to work together.
Getting to know incoming Chancellor Rebecca Blank
The University of Wisconsin-Madison might be comprised of 40,000 students, but each one of us wants to know our university cares about us. This starts with the chancellor.
We strongly encourage Rebecca Blank to think about ways to reach out to us, the students. It will be a challenge. It will take creativity. But it will make the Badger experience even more special and personal.
If Blank wants an example of a great way to engage students, she should take a page out of former Chancellor Biddy Martin’s book. Everything from her name—we referred to her simply as “Biddy”—to her efforts to reach us through social media made it feel as though she was the chancellor of a university with 4,000 students, rather than one with 40,000.
Blank can effectively use social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, to reach out to us. We are all connected online as Badgers, and it is especially important our chancellor connects with us as well. We don’t just want Blank to feel like our chancellor, we want her to feel like a fellow Badger. We want to feel like she is as passionate about UW-Madison as we are.
Getting to know us is also as simple as showing up to events. Go to the All Campus Party. Go to Diversity Week. Go to Bascom Hill on snow days (and please call snow days. We will love you for it).
It comes down to this: We want to know you.
Having an engaged chancellor is good for our image. People often wonder what it means to be a Badger. Being a Badger means having pride in this institution. It means not being able to imagine going anywhere else for college. We want Blank to show us she shares this passion.
It is good for our university’s recruitment. One of the primary concerns prospective students have about UW-Madison is how big it is. It is hard to imagine a university this large taking a vested interest in us. Blank has the opportunity to make this notion a misconception.
Simply put, it will make us a better school. Badgers love community. We love our campus. We love what our university stands for. We can’t wait to share this campus with Rebecca Blank.
Budget Surplus
The recent revelation that the UW system had nearly $1 billion in reserves came to a shock to many, especially the state Republicans. This resulted in some calling for a tuition freeze and has generated more distrust between state Republicans and the university.
There is a lesson to be learned here for incoming chancellor Rebecca Blank, and it is the importance of getting along with state government.
First things first, the reserve is a good thing. Any smart organization is going to have a way to handle a disaster financially, and the UW System must be no different. We encourage keeping the reserves up for the good of the system.
Furthermore, the knowledge that the system is in the money—something no one should really be surprised about—does not necessitate a tuition freeze. This board hopes for lower tuition as much as anyone else, but we also understand that the university needs funding if it wants to improve. With little hope of increased funding from the state, the university needs the flexibility to fund its operations.
All this being said, the important lesson to be learned is to improve the university’s public relations. There is no reason state officials should not have known about the reserves beforehand. There is no reason everyone associated with the system didn’t know about it. Furthermore, students and parents alike are shelling out hard-earned money, and they deserve to know how their money is spent.
Openness within government is vital to protect citizens, but also vital for a government to run smoothly. By letting state officials find out about the billion dollar reserves by themselves, it shocked them. It made them act hastily, and now Democrats and Republicans are talking about tuition freezes, which as we state is not the idea the UW System needs.
The university lost its chance to become more independent when the Biddy Martin plan failed, and now it needs to work with the state to make the public higher education system in Wisconsin work.
This boils down to improving the public relations and government relations team at the university. The university is dealing with a skeptical public and increasingly skeptical state Republicans. Work with them; in fact, work twice as hard. Because if the university doesn’t get in good with the government, the university is only going to suffer.
Sexual Assault Awareness
Recently, a UW-Madison alumna came forward with her experience of sexual assault. Her story spoke of poor support and lack of interest at the hands of the university. While it did not mirror the mishandlings at Amherst College and Duke University, it certainly did not reach the standard one would expect from UW-Madison.
Sexual assault is a unique crime,and must be dealt with as such. Oftentimes it is embarrassing for the victim and emotionally damaging to a crippling degree. As such, handling the situation should be its own unique process as well. As it stands, not many students know the university to be as large of a resource as it is. Reporting sexual assault to the university allows the victim to remain anonymous, while reporting the crime to the police does not. While we always condone going to the police when assaulted, we understand the potential desire to remain anonymous as a victim.
This being said, it is critical that the university and UHS present themselves as a resource for those assaulted. If the university can spend the money to print posters stressing the importance of locking your doors, they can certainly afford to print posters presenting the signs of assault and the resources for the victims. Similarly, UHS could add a tab on their website pertaining to the recognition of sexual assault. Awareness is the most important step in prevention, and having a resource simply as an extension of wisc.edu is a simple change that could make a big difference. Even at SOAR, there should be a seminar on the signs, effects and places an individual can go to receive support and potential prosecution for their assaulter. If it happens on campus, which it does here as it does at all college campuses, incoming freshmen should be prepared.
With the drinking culture that undoubtedly exists at this university, knowing the potential for assault is crucial and should remain on every individual’s mind, regardless of gender. If one chooses to go to the police, which should not be an intimidating option for the victim, they should have the option to remain anonymous in the report. As it stands now, this is not the case. While this system is fine for theft crimes, sexual assault is in its own category, and a level of anonymity must be maintained if the victim so chooses. The prosecution rate for sexual assault is high if it is reported soon after the event. While this is a traumatic experience for the victim, going through the proper procedures to prosecute a predator is a necessary step, both toward healing and eliminating the potential for that individual to assault another.
There is no reason for the university not to act on promoting awareness of itself as a resource for the victims of sexual assault. If printing posters and speaking about sexual assault at orientation prevent even one case of this traumatic crime, it will be worth it.
Diversity at UW-Madison
Earlier this semester, the Associated Students of Madison had a week-long series of events consisting of their diversity week. Unfortunately, student turnout at most of the events was very low. When a student-organized event fails to draw attendees, there could be dozens of different reasons: marketing, an event’s timing or topic, the location etc. This board began asking why ASM’s diversity week had such a disappointing turn-out, but we began to address a larger question: What does it mean for a campus to be diverse, and what can the university do to encourage diversity?
UW-Madison pays someone to ask themselves these questions: Chief Diversity Officer Damon Williams. Last year, this board witnessed Williams’ inspiring students to stand—perhaps too vigorously—against a report from the conservative think tank the Center for Equal Opportunity, which accused UW-Madison of unfairly rejecting white and Asian-American applicants. The CEO protests inspired outrage and vitriol, but where was Williams during Diversity Week? Williams and his office need to be more engaged in day-to-day campus life.
We don’t think Williams’ mere presence is going to increase diversity. In fact, defining diversity and attempting to achieve it are challenging tasks. This board wants to see the university embrace a more objective approach to improving diversity on campus. This can be achieved by setting specific goals. For example, minority students are frequently the only representative of their race in many of their classes. This shouldn’t be the case. Another metric this board found useful is the difference between racial groups’ dropout and four-year graduation rates. Accepting objective measures takes much of the complexity out of race-related issues. This reduced-complexity isn’t great for discourse but might be necessary for policy decisions.
Achieving diversity is more confusing than measuring it. This board thinks many of the initiatives currently on campus are counter-productive. For example, the international diversity floor probably produces a lot of knowledgeable students, but its existence reduces the amount of diversity everywhere else on campus. By touting diversity, this floor actually increases segregation. Likewise, the cleavage of UW-Madison’s Greek communities into basically a white and Jewish system and a black/Hispanic/Asian system is incredibly counterproductive. We understand fraternities and sororities can exist for a variety of different reasons, but Greek organizations should be overseen according to their classification (social, professional etc.) instead of the make-up of their members. Also, we understand the desire to find a community in people who look alike and perhaps have a common background with you. But ultimately, the multicultural greek organizations represent a form of damaging self-segregation. If the amount of non-white students on campus was larger, there would be less need for these self-segregating communities. Until then, these organizations should be pushed by the university and themselves to take an active part in the larger UW-Madison community. This board doesn’t want to judge these groups as negative forces on campus, because they certainly aren’t, but we believe their structure reflects some of the self-defeating initiatives surrounding increasing diversity.
The university needs to acknowledge its role—in front of student organizations—as being responsible for preparing students to enter the diverse world as competent and knowledgeable citizens. Teaching diversity and multicultural tolerance can be done in the classroom, but this board believes events such as ASM’s diversity week are just as valuable. The university should create one or two prerequisite classes, one to be taken as a freshman or sophomore, the other as a junior or senior. These one-credit classes would require the enrolled student to attend 4-5 diversity related events throughout the course of the semester put on by a registered student organization and write a report on their experience for the end of the semester. These classes wouldn’t be so strenuous someone couldn’t fit them into their schedule and would encourage students to engage in various events on campus while learning about citizenship and diversity. This is just one in an infinite number of ways the university could better acknowledge its role in cultivating a diverse climate and graduating well-rounded citizens ready for a multicultural world.
Overall, the university needs to step back and reevaluate the goals and needs of increasing diversity. After a firm reevaluation, the university can begin to take a more effective and proactive take on increasing diversity here in Madison.
Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
