In 1944, on the eve of
midnight for one of history’s greatest tyrannies, Congress made a behemoth
investment in the future of the nation and signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment
Act — affectionately nicknamed the G.I. bill — into law.

Sixty years later, reflecting
on that most justified of state interventions, it is impossible not to ask —
where the hell did government go in the meantime?

Granted, this
university still receives the majority of its government funding from
Washington, D.C. Yet the Wisconsin Legislature remains the most visible
manifestation of the university’s fiscal ties to a larger society, and the
university seems to keep getting the short stick.

First there’s the
funding problem.

Ten years ago, the
Legislature provided the university with $337.2 million, which made up 26.9
percent of a $1.25 billion university budget.

This past year,
however, the university received $461.1 million, which amounted to just 20.19
percent of a $2.28 billion budget.

And so, though state
funding for the university has admittedly increased, it has done so at a
sluggish pace that belies a larger crisis — Wisconsin’s flagship, to compete
with rival giants such as Illinois and Michigan, has gone on a spending binge
to protect its reputation. Simultaneously, the Legislature has embarked on a
campaign of fiscal conservatism at a time when undergraduate tuition has more
than doubled over a 10-year period. Troubling to say the least.

There’s also the
ominous penchant for intellectual quackery on the part of certain legislators
who continually intervene in the university’s business in a manner that
prevents even the most trivial of ameliorations from occurring.

Rep. Joan Ballweg,
R-Markesan, claiming to represent rural students at the university, opposes
granting domestic partnership benefits to professors in a same-sex
relationship. You see, Ms. Ballweg says she is advocating the
“traditional” viewpoint. Huh. According to this ridiculous
interpretation of orthodoxy, rural students stand to gain in some vague,
unquantifiable way if otherwise superb professors leave because the university
won’t give them what it gives everybody else as a result of decisions they make
in their own bedrooms.

And then there are the
infighters. Senate President Fred Risser, D-Madison, bemoans the fact that the
state spends almost as much on corrections as it does on higher education,
saying many of those incarcerated should not be rotting in prison at the
expense of the taxpayer. On the other hand, Rep. Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater,
the perpetual scapegoat for UW’s funding woes, argues the problem lies in
tuition dollars going to research that could be funded privately. Perhaps both
arguments are correct, but the sense of intractability emanating from both
sides indicates no solution will be found.

But as convenient as
it is to levy the entire burden of guilt on the thinly insulated politicos at
the other end of State Street, it is time another question was asked — are
Wisconsin legislators consistently made aware of what students think? Well, uh,
no. That’s because Legislative Affairs, the branch of the Associated Students
of Madison founded explicitly to present the concerns of students to the
Legislature, isn’t even registered to lobby in the Capitol!

If students have no
way to present their grievances, then it should come as no surprise that
legislators such as Ms. Ballweg are insisting they know best, or that opponents
such as Messrs. Nass and Risser haven’t any clue as to the urgency of finding a
compromise.

And as tuition
skyrockets to Olympian heights, driven by a competitive war with rival
institutions whose only result is an increasingly volatile college ranking
system, and as the more bizarre inhabitants of the Legislature continue to
throw up roadblocks to the few options left to the university, it is essential
a semblance of a counterargument be made in the form of Legislative Affairs.
The stakes are higher this time.

And this time,
stubbornness on the part of a few legislators and a few feeble gestures of
impotence from Legislative Affairs, the one tenuous lifeline that connects
students directly to their government, will bring nothing other than the
long-awaited disaster: a unified middle finger from our professors and our most
qualified students as they exclaim with eloquent disgust, “Fuck this. I’m
going to Michigan.”

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Sam Clegg ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in
economics and political science.