CNN’s chief business analyst Ali Velshi hosted a town hall meeting at the Grainger School of Business Thursday, offering University of Wisconsin students the opportunity to share their perspective on therecession and health care.
The stop in Madison was part of a national tour of town hall meetings held by Velshi, which seeks to hear people’s “unfiltered” opinions about the state of the economy and health care reform.
“We don’t give a lot of notice about where we are going, which makes it hard for groups to organize, which means we get a more unfiltered flavor of what’s going on,” Velshi said.
Velshi added the tour is almost a counter to some of the town halls that we’ve seen on television where there is yelling and screaming; people can disagree, but there isn’t the same heat, Velshi said.
“People aren’t talking to a politician, so they don’t have to be angry at me, so I can really hear what people are thinking,” Velshi said.
Students unadulterated optimism offers a unique perspective, according to Velshi.
He added the recession has forced a lot of people to think about the past, but students, by definition, have to think about the future, which provides a great opportunity to listen to what hopeful people are thinking.
This type of optimism was well represented at the meeting.
“I think it’s all about moderation. Moderation is something that, as a society, we don’t seem to understand; I would like to see a paradigm shift that puts conserving above consumption,” said Nicholas Grant, a first-year MBA student.
While Velshi thought there was clearly more optimism than pessimism on the part of students, there was still a healthy dose of realism.
“It’s definitely a nice thing to think that we could all live really nicely without buying new things, or saving and not using a credit card, (but) I’m not afraid to say it, I like to get things now. … The fact of the matter is that is really engrained in our culture,” UW senior Julian Moncada said.
The unique position in life students occupy also may allow them to approach issues like the economy and health care from a valuable perspective, Velshi said.
“Generally speaking, students don’t have themselves to blame. They don’t have to sit there and beat themselves up about it; they can almost be a little more objective about how things went wrong,” Velshi said.
At the same time, Velshi added, students have to think about these issues on a regular basis as most have more money going out than they do coming in, as well as obviously being challenged by these issues when it comes to applying for jobs.
UW marketing professor Deborah Mitchell added UW students are representative of a portion of the population who has the energy, resources, heritage and ambition to make a difference in the country.
“Americans who care about what’s next and how to move away from the current stalemate in our country–they recognize that folks like UW-Madison students are diagnostic of what’s to come,” Mitchell said.
