In early July, Governor Scott McCallum announced the appointment of Tommie Jones, Jr. to the UW System Board of Regents, and almost immediately that familiar clamor could be heard spewing forth from our campus’ most vocal of student groups, the Associated Students of Madison (ASM). As Jones begins his two-year term, he must decide how much weight he will give the opinions of student government as he makes decisions that will impact the future of the UW System. The answer: they don’t deserve much.
Jones comes to his position with a strong record of working closely with students and administrators at UW-Whitewater to find common ground and implement policies that have benefited both the student body and the institution as a whole. He is thoughtful, intelligent and charismatic and will be a strong advocate for programs aimed at increasing diversity, controlling tuition costs and bettering the university’s service to its customers.
ASM, on the other hand, is known for doling out our money to organizations run by themselves and their friends, communicating mainly through the use of a megaphone and complaining about most everything. While freeing Mumia, saving manatees and eliminating the nuclear threat may all be good causes (and seemingly favorites of the ASM crowd), they have little bearing on our education.
ASM and its minions have already attacked Jones for “pricing students out of an education,” “betraying the African-American race” and accepting a non-elected position. It has spent the summer tearing down the very person it ought to be finding a way to work with. What ASM doesn’t get is this: the possibility does exist that it can be wrong sometimes.
Regent Jones must understand that to be the only student on the Board of Regents is not to be a mouthpiece for any person or group; not Governor Scott McCallum, not UW System President Katherine Lyall, not the Legislature and certainly not the holier-than-thou club known as ASM. A Regent must do what he or she feels is best for the institution and the taxpayers, students and families that fuel it.
Jones will face the difficult challenge of listening not necessarily to the person or interest group that yells the loudest, but more importantly to the quiet masses of students who plug along every day to make it to class, pay the bills, get an education and try to find time for a few beers on the weekend. It is in the interest of this great silent majority that Jones must operate.
Tommie: Two years from now, when you look back on your service to the state and the university, I am confident you will have much to be proud of. You may not be able to claim that you reunited the Koreas or that you freed Tibet, but if you remain honest to yourself and all of your diverse constituencies, UW will be in your debt. ASM will continue to debate and resolve and talk. Just remember that if you, like the rest of us, only listen to ASM occasionally, it will end up talking only to itself.
