For the most part, last year’s editorial board was pleased with the decision to appoint Rebecca Blank as our university’s next chancellor. While impressed by her financial and academic experiences in previous positions, the board urged Blank to embrace the opportunities being a Badger would present to her, such as getting to know a diverse student body and engaging with the unique governance structure on which our university prides itself. A few months and a few new members later, we find ourselves taking the same position.
Following her appointment last spring, members of campus leadership, including our editorial board, expressed concern
over her ability to make connections with campus. We are happy to say we have been impressed with Blank’s efforts thus far to get out of Bascom Hall and into the campus community. She has already introduced herself to incoming freshmen on move-in day, hosted a tailgate party and embraced her new identity as @BeckyBlank on Twitter. We don’t think many students can picture previous Chancellor David Ward lifting a futon through the halls of a campus dormitory, so we consider these efforts an improvement on his often-criticized approach to student relations.
However, this board firmly believes her engagement with students must not end with Welcome Week. Blank has a responsibility to students that goes beyond knowing a few names out of 40,000. In recent years, the administration has been at odds with students over many issues that have truly been of large-scale importance to students—think increasing the ever-growing tuition we all pay, funding the student organizations of which many of us are a part of or impinging on the shared governance rights of our elected student government.
Shared governance creates an environment in which students can have a voice in how our university is run through the Associated Students of Madison student government. In recent years, this body has often been ignored or discounted by administrators. As a board we hope this year’s ASM representatives will fight against this should it happen again. Chancellor Blank should be prepared to be at odds with students, which she herself admitted in an interview with both campus newspapers. But this requires her to be familiar with how her office relates to students on an administrative level, and what this board finds discouraging is that Blank does not yet seem familiar with how it works.
In her campus press interview, she was asked multiple questions about the intersection of her office and student shared governance and on all accounts Blank had not been briefed on the matter. While we certainly don’t expect Blank to know the ins and outs of shared governance immediately, we would have appreciated an effort to understand issues that are quite likely to come up, such as student segregated fee funding. However, we found it encouraging that Blank seemed very willing to keep communications open with students. We all would appreciate a chance to tailgate with Chancellor Blank, but at the end of the day, we would appreciate her commitment to be present at the negotiation table this year much more.
That’s not to say this board did not also find the good in our first impression of Blank. In her interview, she also stressed her commitment to finding new funding streams for our university, a consistent point of contention in recent years. As state support continues to decline while costs continue to rise, it is about time someone looks elsewhere and we are fully supportive of Blank’s proposed efforts to increase donor dollars. In addition to providing financial flexibility, a fundraising campaign is a great avenue by which we can show the rest of the state how important our university is to its economy and community. It’s very evident that Blank’s background in economics is already being put to good use in her new role, and we are hopeful this approach to our university’s budget will lead to increased financial stability during her time here.
We also feel encouraged that Blank’s financial expertise and experience working in government will impress state lawmakers, who have had clearly less than stellar opinions of university officials in recent years. She expressed a desire to keep lines of communication open with representatives at the Capitol and we encourage her to continue Ward’s work rebuilding any broken relationships from the past few years.
Overall, we are optimistic about Blank’s future plans for our university, but it seems like she may be playing it a bit safe so far. Do we respect her for taking a step back on some questions and admitting she was not yet very familiar with their context? Sure. Are we discouraged that most of those questions were ones involving student shared governance? Most definitely.
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