As I have been contemplating different ideas for my final column in the Badger Herald, I found myself looking back at the past three and a half years and thinking how lucky I am to have been involved in some great debates on this campus — the sweatshop protests in 2000, the protest over David Horowitz’s anti-reparations ad, Southworth, drink specials and many others.

While all of these issues fostered mostly insightful debates about the issue at hand with relatively little name-calling, one debate — that of campus climate — has fallen to the wayside.

This university has lost sight of what really needs to be debated when it comes to making the climate at UW welcoming to all students. Instead it has turned into a bout of name-calling and games of just throwing money at the problem with few concrete results. This past semester is the perfect example of how everyone — students, faculty and the administration alike — need to take a step back and rethink the direction of the debate when it comes to improving campus climate.

Basically, we need to go back to square one and reexamine what will make this campus more comfortable for everyone — going beyond just increased diversity in a multi-cultural sense to diversity in viewpoints, sexual orientation, religions and geography.

As it stands now, the goal is known: make the campus more welcoming. But how to get there is not known. Everyone has differing views on what will make the campus climate better, and without a more clear-cut plan on what specifically needs to be done, things will remain stagnant.

Which is what’s happening now. While the university does have Plan 2008 to increase diversity, just increasing numbers is not going to dramatically improve whether or not students of color feel more included.

Additionally, just throwing money at the problem is also not going to solve anything. Devoting resources to increasing diversity and multiculturalism is something every university should do. Without money, these groups and programs will never have a chance to get off the ground.

However, the amount of money provided is debatable, and with this money also must come accountability and responsibility, not just the ability to point to it when one’s devotion to diversity is questioned in public.

Currently, the university is allocating numerous resources to increasing diversity, but the university also needs to take stock of how groups and programs are using that money. In addition, the university and student body must be willing to declare failure if it means moving forward in solving the problem.

Failure is not bad; rather, it can be an opportunity to learn from mistakes. And, just because members of the student government think that groups are not doing their job when it comes to campus climate, it does not mean they are racists — rather, it means they disagree with how those groups have used the funding they’ve received, a right every student has.

Money should not be the only criterion by which anyone determines if a university or student government is an advocate of improving campus climate; it needs to be the successful programs and policies put in place to help foster debate and create a welcoming climate. Programs and groups are in place, yes, but they cannot be working to their full ability simply because campus climate is as tense as ever.

But it is not just the groups’ faults; it is more the fault of people from both sides inside the debate. Unless people change their current attitudes to become more open to actually debating the different sides, no amount of money is going to fix the problem.

The fact that some students see this point is evident in this semester’s SSFC meetings, where some multi-cultural groups including MEChA and Diversity Education Specialists were declared ineligible by a majority of the committee. Student judiciary overturned the decision on DES’ eligibility, but the budget is up for review again by ASM along with other groups such as SAFEWalk, MCSC, Wunk Sheek and Asian Pacific American Council. It was determined by some members that these groups were not improving campus climate based upon these groups’ past actions or that they were getting more money than what was fiscally responsible.

This, of course, is a debatable point, but rather than actually having a debate over the criteria that should be used in determining a group’s worth, it has turned into name-calling and people holding up votes because they don’t agree with where the vote is going to land.

One ASM member summed it up best in a Badger Herald story Monday when he said that the left and right could not find a middle ground. That’s the easy answer. Ask why this is and it’s because neither side has been willing to budge and listen to the alternative viewpoint — rather, they have been more interested in silencing the opposing viewpoint. This has led to an increase in tensions, making campus climate worse, not better.

To get anywhere in improving campus climate, everyone at this university needs to take a step back and look at what has happened to the debate. There is no finite goal where all of a sudden bells and whistles will go off declaring that everyone feels comfortable at UW. However, success can be achieved when the issues surrounding campus climate can be debated in a civil manner where all sides are heard and considered, an atmosphere this university is lacking.

In order for anything to improve, people’s egos need to be put aside, money can no longer be used as a sole solution, and failure needs to be an option. Without the ability to say something is not working, and not run the risk of being called a racist in the process, the debate will go nowhere.

Katie Harbath ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and political science.