OPINION & EDITORIAL
Chancellor lies, betrays MCSC
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by Tshaka Barrows
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
My fellow students, our chancellor has lied and in doing so betrayed us all. UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley needs to do his homework.
In an article by N. Zeke Campfield in the Oct. 29 Badger Herald, Chancellor Wiley and other campus administrators questioned the wisdom of raising segregated fees to fund programs they see as redundant. It is shameful that the programs and services outlined in the Multicultural Student Coalition and Diversity Education Specialist’s budget proposal have been labeled as redundant by our chancellor, a blatant lie due to the fact that no services like them (MCSC-DES) currently exist on campus and have not existed in the past.
The MCSC-DES proposal is a comprehensive plan that strategically outlines a structure capable of providing structured support, resources and services to one of the most neglected areas of student services. The service area entails building multicultural competencies through facilitating more cross-cultural programs, events and other opportunities for the students on campus. This service division also works on providing support and services for students and student organizations interested in working to improve campus climate.
The chancellor, along with other uninformed members of our campus community, has taken the liberty to attack what he does not understand. The actions of the chancellor in criticizing the MCSC budget work to undermine the efforts of the MCSC-DES proposal by reinforcing the type of narrow-minded ideology that urges students to ignore the obvious differences between the MCSC-DES proposal and Plan 2008.
With these actions, the chancellor is actively facilitating the very problem the MCSC-DES proposal aims to address. The chancellor explained his personal reaction by saying, “We spent a lot of time and effort with a lot of students, faculty and staff input developing Plan 2008.”
While it is true that Diversity Plan 2008 is valued and important, it does not address or outline any of the services provided by the MCSC-DES proposal. This means that even if Plan 2008 was fully funded, the services provided by the MCSC and DES would continue not to exist without funding from the Student Services Finance Committee.
It is very difficult to understand the chancellor’s betrayal; the students who have designed the MCSC-DES proposal are the same students who have worked tirelessly to gain full funding for all initiatives outlined within Plan 2008, the same students who lobbied the UW System Board of Regents, the same students who lobbied the Wisconsin State Legislature and the same students who have made concerted efforts to educate fellow students about the seven goals of Plan 2008. Now that these students have taken the initiative to provide resources outside of Plan 2008, the chancellor has failed to reciprocate the support for the same students who have supported him and his administration’s efforts to implement Plan 2008.
It is painful to see that the chancellor is so reluctant to support such an important student service, identified and created by the same students who are in desperate need of the service, especially in areas where these services have not been provided in the past.
Many students devoted their time and energy to serve on the Plan 2008 Steering Committee, and as a student who worked closely with that committee, I would like to testify to the fact that the administration identified segregated fees as another area, separate from Plan 2008, where students could more aggressively request the resources necessary to enable students to work on increasing multicultural competencies as well as to improve campus climate.
The chancellor has used misinformation to attempt to deter the committee from fully funding the MCSC budget request, which is completely disrespectful and unethical, as the chancellor did not attend the hearings, nor did he take the time to correctly inform himself of the facts about the MCSC-DES proposal.
All of this uninformed speculation has worked to create the type of climate necessary to justify discriminatory levels of scrutiny being placed on the MCSC-DES proposal throughout the GSSF process.
It is very upsetting to see that on Monday, the day SSFC was to make such a historic decision, the most powerful and influential administrator on our campus, Chancellor John Wiley, took the liberty to insert his ill-informed opinion in a way that would erode student support for the budget.
While upsetting, it is not surprising that the administration does not favor segregated fees going to the vital support and resources necessary to provide direct services to the student groups responsible for creating the majority of multicultural opportunities on campus. It seems that the chancellor and other members of our campus community would like to see the current process continue, a process which places the vast majority of the burden of providing multicultural opportunities on students of color and multicultural organizations.
Maybe it is less redundant to continue to abandon the students who have been neglected for so long and leave them to take on the majority of the responsibility for providing multicultural opportunities by themselves.
I think that the MCSC-DES proposal represents a culture shock for the chancellor and other members of our campus community, who would rather not see significant advances in cross-cultural student services. Fortunately for all of us, the chancellor has no vote on SSFC; unfortunately for Diversity Plan 2008, the chancellor’s lies and betrayal will inevitably cause further confusion and misunderstanding among members of our campus community. Thanks, John.
Tshaka Barrows (tibarro1@students.wisc.edu) is a senior majoring in political science. He is co-chair of the Multicultural Student Coalition
