Chancellor John Wiley wrote Monday about continuing to make the University of Wisconsin’s campus more diverse. The UW administration “[remains] absolutely committed to building an inclusive community free of social bias and inclusion,” he said. And creating a campus atmosphere free of social bias should absolutely be a priority at this university.
Boasting academically superb students from a variety of backgrounds and whose economic class is insignificant should always be a goal. In order to create a truly exceptional atmosphere on campus, UW must first allow students from all financial backgrounds affordable entrance.
The goal of keeping this campus economically diverse is unreachable, however, when one group of students is forced to pay near-impossible and ever-rising tuition rates: those non-Wisconsin residents without reciprocity. These individuals face an economic pass/fail test upon considering attendance to UW; at a price rivaling exclusive private universities across the country, the tuition here causes many potentially enriching applicants to drop out of the race before the starting pistol has even been fired.
As a result, broad stereotypes exist about all sorts of out-of-state students. Illinois natives and those flying in from the Northeast are considered by many students both Wisconsinite and otherwise to be pretentious and exclusive. Conflicts arise in bars and house parties with not-so-flattering nicknames like “FIB” (F@#$ing Illinois Bastard) and “Coastie” being tossed around like bad hot lunch in a fifth-grade cafeteria fight. After all, spotting a non-resident is easy for most Madisonians — just look for Ugg boots, pointy shoes and fraternity brothers driving German sport utility vehicles.
The largest group of out-of-state students, however, faces no such negative profiling: no widely accepted three-letter acronym exists for Minnesota natives, nor can one of our northern friends be identified outright while strolling down State Street.
And for good reason. The FIB and Coastie stereotypes, albeit sometimes misleading and untrue, exist because they’re generally true. The only non-resident students enrolled at the University of Wisconsin are those whose checkbooks are fat enough to afford it.
Ask any UW student from Illinois about his or her hometown and the description will probably fall in line with an affluent Chicago suburb: an area sporting good schools, a bustling economy and plenty of well-off families. It’s no coincidence — rich suburbs are where wealth and strong educational values come together to breed college-bound teens who can both afford expensive tuition and make the selective cut Madison’s admissions office makes each year.
In stark contrast, the Minnesotan student body doesn’t fit into just one tax bracket: those students don’t face a clean-cutting financial weed-out process. Attending this university is within the grasp of most any resident of Minnesota, whether or not his or her parents are highly paid executives.
UW is a state-funded school that depends on Sconnies’ tax revenue to provide a good education for Wisconsin residents. Students from Illinois, Virginia and otherwise — or perhaps their parents — don’t usually pay this state’s taxes, so non-residents need to fill the gap somehow. That makes sense. By simply increasing non-resident tuition to compensate, however, the Board of Regents creates an elite band of incoming foreigners and weaves a web of social tension across this campus that grows thicker by the year.
And the education Wisconsin residents receive thanks to those state tax dollars ends up encompassing a slew of misconceptions regarding other states near and far.
Working toward a more equal-footed student body should include initiatives to somehow diversify incoming non-residents. Not by actively discriminating against the wealthy, but by giving those not-quite-privileged-enough students a chance: either through an increased number of financial-aid programs, lower out-of-state tuition or possibly the development of inter-state funding agreements between high-attendance states like Illinois.
This institution should not invite only privileged non-residents to attend: the cost of a less diverse student body and the proliferation and reinforcement of negative stereotypes and sentiments is too great for a forward-looking university to bear.
Taylor Hughes ([email protected]) is a sophomore intending to major in business.
