In response to Nicole Marklein’s article about school choice programs Oct. 15, I have a few counter points that should be known. There is another kind of school choice in Milwaukee that not many know about.
Students at all levels can choose to attend any public school in the city regardless of income. Students are not confined to their school district. Many of Milwaukee’s schools provide a very good education. Two of the high schools consistently make it onto lists of the top high schools in America. The high quality education in Milwaukee is surprising, considering the amount of money the schools have to use.
Milwaukee Public School (MPS) is the second-poorest school district in the entire state. This is partly because a large part of school funding often comes from the local community. In Milwaukee, where many people have extremely low incomes, there is not a lot of money for the community to give.
Another reason there isn’t enough money in MPS is because of the School Choice Program. This program is detrimental to improving the schools that need improving and maintaining the good schools. This program causes thousands more dollars to be spent per student than if the student attended a public school. In fact, what this does is take money away from the thousands of students who attend MPS and gives those students a worse education. Not everyone can participate in this program. It left students like me, who wanted to attend a public school, at a disadvantage.
Erin Hayes
UW freshman
Milwaukee resident and MPS graduate – Riverside University High School
[email protected]
Throughout September, the month of organizational recruitment, I have heard from many students commenting on the diversity of this campus. Kudos to you all for identifying and criticizing our university for the lack thereof.
Currently serving as vice chair of your student government, the Associated Students of Madison (ASM), I address the campus community at large to extend a sincere apology, in particular to the first- and second-year undergraduate students, for the propaganda you were fed (and the subsequent disappointment you now express) when making your decision to commit the next four years of your life to UW-Madison.
Many of you have expressed your disappointment of how, despite what the catalogues and reputation and even your college-prep counselor may have advised, you are still looking for that progressive diversity so proudly (but falsely) advertised. Your disheartening search, however, was and is not necessarily in vain.
To the students of color, if you want to see the diversity of UW-Madison, take a look in the mirror. You are our diversity. When the system doles out the statistics that hardly reach the double digits, it’s talking about and counting on you. We count on your being here to add to the little but extant “diversity,” and we cannot afford to lose you.
To the majority students who recognize and are irritated by the lack of diversity, continue to be outraged; you are particularly needed to hold the university and your fellow majority students accountable. Combat the rough campus climate by organizing and advocating, because a mere whisper from you about diversity will likely gain greater reception than a shout from a marginalized student.
The university has dedicated itself to the System-Wide Plan 2008 and incorporated the two Rs into its commitment: recruitment and retention. The university should be commended for creating and sustaining such initiatives geared toward recruitment — programs and scholarships like Shadow Day, POSSE and the PEOPLE Program. These programs allow greater access for, yes, students with much merit, leading to admirable recruitment numbers.
Yet the story of the university’s efforts to increase diversity falls into intermission right about here. The university community as a whole is failing in the field of retention. There is something seriously wrong when people, despite even their free rides on tuition, are choosing to leave in the midst of their Madison career.
No, Madison is not your average college experience. It is not normal to hear of and maybe even have stories like that time when a bottle was thrown at you, or worse yet, when someone pissed on you. It is abnormal to have to zigzag your way up State Street, dodging highly-concentrated areas for fear of being groped. It is anything but normal to have to feel shame seeing your ethnic identity belittled by its misspelled utility in a student publication. Actually, it’s abnormal everywhere but here.
Contrary to what reputation attempts to advertise, we are not the Berkeley of the Midwest. The diversity and progressiveness of the university is a fallacy or, at best, a work in progress. Many of you are suffering, while many more of you are fed up and are already making plans to leave or to transfer out.
Again, fellow students, the university cannot afford to lose you. The university realizes this and thus grants support to and emphasis on entities like campus centers and organizations. These groups, in turn, are held highly accountable for the sole (and oftentimes overloaded) responsibility of “initiating and promoting diversity education and programs.”
These centers and organizations were created in response to former students’ demands and are here for present students’ needs. Utilize these groups, their programs and the valuable history and knowledge that the upperclassmen and staff have to offer. These are the campus venues that will place much validity to your story and speak out for you when you can’t. These are the campus resources that will help you survive your fragile years here at Madison and ultimately offer you a reason to stay.
I forward this on to student publications with more frequent circulation schedules, including The Daily Cardinal, The Badger Herald and The Madison Observer, as well as various organizations and list serves in hopes of reaching a relatively wide audience.
Sharon Lee
UW junior
Vice Chair, Associated Students of Madison
[email protected]
Richard Lobb, the spokesperson for the National Chicken Counsel, can try to paint a rosy picture about how chickens are raised for KFC, but people need to realize that if they’re eating chicken, they’re supporting cruelty to animals, and if they’re eating at KFC, they’re supporting a company that has done nothing to prevent some of the worst abuses of chickens.
Before they are slaughtered and served in an extra value bucket, chickens are crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy warehouses with no access to fresh air or sunlight. Many of them suffer from respiratory diseases, bacterial infections, crippled legs, heart attacks and other serious ailments. Factory farmers routinely sear the beaks off newborn baby chicks with a hot blade and no pain reliever. During slaughter, their throats are cut and they are often dumped in a scalding tank of boiling water while fully conscious.
Although most people don’t know chickens as well as they know cats and dogs, these intelligent, interesting, social birds can feel love, happiness, loneliness, fear and pain, just the same. People can see PETA’s undercover footage, most of it taken in the past two years, of the abuses KFC supports at KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.
Heather Moore
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
[email protected]
The guest lecture presented by Philip Trostel and covered in Thursday’s paper was correct in bemoaning the cuts to university systems across the country. I’m sure Professor Trostel knows what has happened here in Wisconsin, but let me remind him and your readers what Democratic Gov. James E. Doyle has done to our beloved UW.
Doyle said he would support the UW. He promised students he would not raise tuition beyond the 8 percent that Gov. Scott McCallum had capped it at in the last budget. Doyle even, at one point, said he would go lower than an 8 percent tuition increase. Doyle made a lot of promises during the campaign — and he broke nearly every one of them.
Doyle came into office and immediately started hacking away at the UW System. Doyle started by cutting $250 million — almost one fourth of the funds UW receives biennially from the state — from UW in the 2003-2005 budget. On top of that $250 million present to returning students on campus, Doyle also socked students with an 18 percent tuition increase this year alone, and an over 30 percent tuition increase over two years.
Jim Doyle is no friend of students. He alone proved that with the significant cuts to the system and additional tuition increase.
Then his regents proposed increases in executive salaries without proper public notice. As soon as it happened, Republican legislators took the regents to the mat — it was a couple days, maybe even a week, before Doyle piled on with his own comments.
Jim Doyle cannot be trusted. Students will remember his actions when he is up for reelection soon — or when he is facing the recall.
Tom O’Day
Law Student
[email protected]
