A mere mile separates the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus from the state Capitol, yet in the past year it often seemed as though the divide stretched far, far further.
On one side, state legislators grew increasingly frustrated by a series of scandals at UW, from the System's inability to fire convicted felons in a timely manner to a policy prohibiting resident assistants from leading Bible studies in their dorm rooms.
On the other lies the UW Board of Regents, who bemoaned a lack of support for higher education from those in the statehouse, as evidenced by significant budget cuts leading to higher tuition in the past few years.
Given this rift, we applaud a plan announced last week that will assign each regent between two to four legislator "buddies." The pairings — which range from Regent President David Walsh and Assembly Speaker John Gard to student Regent Chris Semenas and long-time Sen. Fred Risser — are aimed at opening channels of communication that too often have been closed between the two groups.
It is vital for legislators to realize how important a service UW provides for the state of Wisconsin. At the same time, UW must acknowledge that as a state agency operating on taxpayer dollars, it must make responsible decisions with its money and not isolate itself under a blanket of policies that do not fly for those in the non-academic world.
So long as the regents and legislators make a good faith effort to work toward this understanding, the buddy plan should be effective. And while we would certainly have liked to see Rep. Scott Suder — one of the sharpest critics of UW policy — be given a regent buddy, the pairings between the 17 regents and 50 lawmakers do appear to facilitate dialogue between those not inclined to engage in such efforts in the past.
UW and the Capitol may be only a mile apart — but as any elementary school teacher would say, that's still a trek better navigated by using the buddy system. So join hands, Tom Loftus and Steve Nass: it's time to make a new friend. The university will be better for it.
