OPINION & EDITORIAL
Board of Regents due for overhaul
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by Badger Herald Editorial Board
Monday, November 5, 2001
The state legislature is currently considering two bills that would add another student representative to the UW Board of Regents. Both should be rejected.
So far, the Assembly has moved only on the proposal to require the governor to pick one student nominated by student governments, and one student who would represent “nontraditional” undergrads. By “nontraditional,” they mean an undergrad who is at least 24 years old and is employed or has children. The bill has already cleared one Assembly committee and is picking up steam on its way toward another.
How adding a 24-year-old undergrad with a family would strengthen Joe College’s voice is beyond us. If the Assembly is truly concerned about students being underrepresented, then the answer is not to feature the advice of an extremely small number of students.
Both proposals would also limit which students the governor can nominate. As it stands now, the governor is free to nominate any student to the two-year position, although the same campus cannot be represented for two consecutive terms. This is problematic.
As the selection of Madison senior Joe Alexander two years ago and the recent nomination of UW-Whitewater senior Tommie Jones demonstrated, governors are fully capable of identifying students who can effectively represent students.
Our experience with student governments, however, shows they are not. Plagued with infighting, cronyism, inefficiency and low student participation, United Council and other student governments have proven time and again to be poor stewards of student interests and funds. A UC-approved student regent would be much more likely to reflect the group’s radical special interests than the average student. By forcing the governor to select a student preordained by UC or some other unrepresentative body, future student regents would surely be less objective and less representative of most college students.
Moreover, such umbrella student government organizations pose a special threat to UW-Madison. In the past, the agendas of these groups have been directly at odds with UW-Madison, with UC going so far as to campaign against funding the Madison Initiative.
In our opinion, the best way to improve these bills would be to recognize Madison’s special position as a world-class university and add a Madison regent to the current system-wide one.
But even better would be addition by subtraction. We would prefer the legislature reduce the overall size of the board. Students would be better served by a 10 or 11-member board with one student representative, rather than 18-member board with two student representatives. A smaller number would not only increase the power of the student representative, but would create an environment more open to and efficient in implementing new ideas.
Few can contend that the current Board of Regents is serving the System well. Out-of-state tuition will soon top the Big 10, in-state tuition is on the rise, diversity has not increased for the past decade, and the quality of education is arguably stagnant. For anybody who has ever attended a Board meeting, it is obvious the regents do little more than rubber stamp proposals and reports by UW System president Kathryn Lyall and her staff.
An overhaul of the Board of Regents is long overdue. Not only will it make the board more innovative and efficient, but, even better, it would strengthen the students’ voice in a far more effective manner than the bills being considered by the Assembly.
