A fair chance exists you’re reading this with a professor or TA evaluation in your hand, poised to offer scathing criticism or warm praise. With that spirit in mind, I thought it appropriate to briefly evaluate the undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin in a final summation of four years of study and journalism.

My bubble sheet yields a blanket run of “10s” for social atmosphere, beer consumption, eligible young women, extracurricular opportunities, football cheering, the Essen Haus and the Union Terrace. Like many UW undergrads, for me life here was akin to four years at an all-inclusive resort and leaving sad. Onward then, to the free-response section …

1) How would you rate the quality of discourse on campus? Henry Kissinger once said campus politics are so heated and contentious because so little is truly at stake. One need only visit a Madison protest to prove Mr. Kissinger’s point. Students attempting to exercise political leadership on campus are both hopelessly out of touch with the typical student and hopelessly unable to restrain their egos.

Start doing something about soggy French fries in the Union and stop trying to get ROTC thrown off campus. Occupying the chancellor’s office endears you to no one, and it’s cowardly besides. If you want the soldiers gone, confront them on your own, the way they used to in the ’60s. We’ll see who wins that showdown…

More constructively, if you really hate the war as much as you say you do, go study up on the history of the Middle East and of American foreign policy so we can have a civil discourse, sans the yelling. Tone down and more of us might listen.

2) Did you feel UW produced an inclusive atmosphere? While we’re at it, let’s dispense with the relentless hand wringing over “diversity,” the religious pursuit of political correctness, and own up to the philosophical orthodoxy that dominates the liberal arts on our campus and call a spade a spade. If this school going to draw a student body principally from within the borders of Wisconsin and from its elite high schools, the population will consist of white, suburban, upper-middle-class Wisconsinites.

Professors and administrators can stop foisting their guilt about this situation upon students at every available pedagogical opportunity. Stop teaching history in purely racial terms and preaching identity politics. Heteronormative white capitalist supremacists pushing consumer culture on the unsuspecting masses is not the world’s most pressing societal ill. Individuals can overcome their prejudices and predilections without authoritarian demagoguery. If that statement makes you noxious, you haven’t overcome yours yet. If you don’t know what heteronormative means, be proud.

3) Did you feel you had adequate opportunity to have your ideas heard? Few professors and fewer teaching assistants vote or donate to Republican candidates. This can be documented empirically. More properly, they find mainstream ideas on social mores repugnant.

Opposition to gay marriage or abortion are largely foreign concepts, considered unworthy of serious intellects in our faculty lounges. This trend shows no signs of abating anytime soon; one only need look at the politics of the future professors in the Teaching Assistants’ Association. Simply admit the fact that though balanced views may be equally tolerated in UW classrooms, they are far from equally respected. Post-modern relativism is the new orthodoxy. All ideas have worth, we are taught, and we must put all cultures and philosophies on a level playing field, unless they offend our progressive sensibilities. To do otherwise is uncouth.

Malarkey. If we are relentlessly sifting and winnowing in pursuit of truth we deny exists, we aren’t sifting and winnowing. We’re playing in the sandbox.

4) Would you recommend this school to a friend? Lots of ideas are floating around this campus. Many are both bogus and tolerable. Thankfully, they don’t really count until we leave, and with a bit of effort students can still cull the wheat from the chaff before walking across the Kohl Center stage. After spending four years in an environment where ideas don’t have deep consequences, and having observed first-hand the truly bizarre ideas that find ready acceptance here, I’ve become hungry to work at the intersection of ideas and action. So, perhaps not quite how it intended, this university succeeded in its mission.

John Stuart Mill was right: To sort this mess of a world out, one must invest himself enough to listen along for a time. I hope we do that going forward. Four years is a good start, and has been.

Eric B. Cullen ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in history. He thanks The Badger Herald’s readers and all the one-time colleagues who became lifetime friends, names more numerous than space allows.