Bonjour et bonne annee.

When a new year rolls around, many people seek out new experiences.

Following the champagne toasts and good wishes for 2005, I left the Herald news desk and found myself drifting toward something new: an opinion column.

I’ve been writing news for a year and a half now, through both the Badger Herald and a summer internship. I love reporting. However, opinion columnists can afford one luxury no one in the news department can: the freedom to openly state an opinion once the reporting is done. So this semester, I look forward to rolling up my sleeves, uncovering stories and being allowed to comment!

So what’s the French Connection?

The name of the column is a reflection of my background: a childhood divided between France and the United States. When I moved to the United States, I found myself constantly comparing it to France. Now when I return to France, I no longer see it with the same eyes, as graduation from an American high school and two-and-a-half years at the University of Wisconsin have been added to the mix. The contrasts between my two lives can be both amusing and unsettling, but in any case they have given me what I feel is valuable perspective, probably similar to the perspective of many immigrants in America. I hope this unusual view will add color to my column.

What will this column be about?

Let me start with what it will not be about. This column will not focus on matters of opinion easily written off as liberal or conservative. (Abortion! Gay marriage! Gun control! The death penalty! The war in Iraq! Freedom fries!) I do not pretend to lack political opinions, but any reference to politics in my column will be limited to its relation to student life. I live in Madison, not Washington, D.C. Discussions grow much more lively when you can’t label the issues; you are then forced to consider them more carefully, without lapsing into emotional knee-jerk reactions.

This column will not engage in bashing France. I only hope my trans-Atlantic experiences will help create an open-minded sort of column, one that draws on foreign opinion as well as American.

I mentioned that prior to this column, I lived in the news department. I hope that I will not leave behind all my news instincts and that this column will draw heavily on actual reporting. I hope my column will never become condescending or preachy.

I would like to dedicate my column to students, especially, though not exclusively, students in Madison. Topics always relevant to the UW scene include everything from Badger athletics, college costs and grades to booze, bars and sex. Of course, college life is not limited to this list of themes, and I hope to address many others. If during the semester you have ideas, feel free to send them my way. I’m open to suggestions.

I’d like to take student topics that may be familiar in many ways and give them a fresh spin by doing a little research, making some phone calls, asking hard questions and challenging conventional thinking.

I’d like to take a closer look at GPA. We’re all back in Madison now and excited for the new semester, but don’t forget it was only a few weeks ago we were pulling all-nighters and overdosing on caffeine so our GPAs wouldn’t suffer. Then some of us got home and compulsively went online to see if our grades were posted and what our averages were. Seriously, does GPA really mean anything? The French live without it; why can’t we?

Six years ago, the UW Faculty Senate rejected reforming its GPA calculations. Provost John Wiley remarked the GPA system was “a very clever system that has some advantages,” acknowledging, however, that “there isn’t any one number that adequately summarizes a student’s academic aptitude or achievement.”

Well, guess what? We’re still stuck with the same system, a system that assumes there is no such thing as an easy or hard professor and there is no such thing as an easy or hard course. It’s also a system that relies on just one number to summarize a student’s academic record — exactly what Wiley was against. This system can unfairly knock students out of the running for the business school, the journalism school and grad school.

I plan on exploring this issue, among others, as the semester progresses. And as I’m looking into this, I’d like to hear your views, too. Does the GPA system need changing?

I won’t have all the answers in advance, but I hope to offer something at least conversation worthy. Maybe even argument worthy.

On verra bien. We’ll see.

Cynthia Martens ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in Italian.