By the time you actually move into your dorm, you’ll no doubt have heard it time and time again: Madison is an incredibly liberal city. Madison is often referred to as “77 square miles surrounded by reality.” Depending on who’s saying it, this could either be high praise or a dire warning – I heard plenty of both when I told people I was going to the University of Wisconsin. My high school advisor joked that Karl Marx used to be student body president, and I’m reasonably sure that he didn’t mean that as a compliment.
Madison’s liberal notoriety isn’t without basis in reality. In 2012, an impressive 71 percent of Dane County residents voted for President Barack Obama. Dane County clearly is not going to be a swing county in any elections in the near future. If you’re from Wisconsin, you’re likely familiar with the “Dane County Liberals” who, if state Republicans are to be believed, are the root of all of Wisconsin’s ills.
Despite Madison’s overwhelming blue tendency, the UW campus is not the liberal heaven/hell (depending on your perspective) it’s made out to be.
To really understand the political dynamic of UW and Madison, it’s important to try to separate the two. This is more difficult here than it is at many schools because of how tightly integrated our campus is with the rest of the city. The UW campus has been so integral to the city’s development and vice versa that it would seem nearly impossible to have one without the other. Despite this, there are some important distinctions between the two.
In many ways, Madison’s liberal reputation acts as something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: It scares non-liberals away and attracts liberals. Put simply, people generally like to live somewhere they feel they fit in.
The story is a bit different for UW students. While the city is certainly part of most students’ decisions to attend UW, it’s usually eclipsed by, well, the school itself. UW could be in the middle of a cornfield (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and that wouldn’t hurt attendance one bit. Why? Because regardless of its location, UW is a world-class institution that attracts the best and brightest from both within Wisconsin and out of state (and out of country).
This is why the political scene on campus is different from that of the city. Madison attracts people who want to live in Madison; UW attracts people who want a great college education. The former tend to be very liberal, while the latter are less so.
Academic excellence does not discriminate based on partisanship, though. Students of all political leanings end up in Madison not because of politics but because of their desire to learn.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the numbers don’t lie – Madison, including campus, is still a very liberal place. Still, it’s not the oppressively leftist place that it’s made out to be. Sure, an average College Democrats meeting is going to be more crowded than an average College Republicans meeting. But the important thing is that both groups exist and maintain an active presence on campus, and you won’t be mocked for joining either one.
Madison may be a liberal city. But in practice, that identity is eclipsed by the vibrant political culture spanning from the farthest left to the farthest right and everywhere in between.
At its heart, UW is not a campus of liberals or conservatives. It is a campus of students, most of whom are much more interested in learning and having a good time than pushing any sort of political agenda on their peers.
Joe Timmerman ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in math and economics.
