There is an infamous image that is inescapably tied to diversity efforts at the University of Wisconsin. You probably know the one – two white women dressed in their Badger best raise their fists as they cheer on the football team. “Wisconsin” and “2001-2002 Undergraduate Application” float above their heads. And, at their left, out peeks the photoshopped face of a black man.
I heard the image referenced twice over the past week. The first was during a classroom discussion of visual ethics. The second reference came from the mouth of Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate Damon Williams at the Student Town Hall Diversity Forum Thursday. He noted that, quite honestly, he would not mind seeing the image buried.
Later at the forum, student after student brought up the canceled November photo shoot that administrators had hoped to use to secure photographs of minority students. Some were upset, some were angry and others simply wanted to make sure everyone in the room was informed of what happened. At times I felt that to talk about anything else would have been dismissive – an indication that the hurt generated by the e-mail advertising the shoot had become less important. That feeling was silencing and even paralyzing; I felt stuck in a past for which I already knew the reality.
As the night went on, I found myself returning to Williams’ comment about burying the past. The image, and likely last year’s e-mail, will never be forgotten. They are, as Williams put it, a part of this university’s institutional memory. But Williams’ sentiment took on new meaning as I realized that these scandals have become more of a chance to spear UW than catalyze change. The conversation has become about why people were mad and not what to do about it.
Burying the past does not mean covering up a mistake or forgetting something happened; it means accepting something, no matter how terrible, and then moving forward to build something better. A small glimmer of that forward momentum flared up at the end of the forum when Williams invited the small groups the crowd had broken into to share where their conversations had taken them. There were solutions, suggestions and generally forward-thinking statements. We were not in the past or the present but in a future guided by lessons of the past.
Ideas ranged from a campus media advisory board to implementing resources for campus leaders struggling to balance academics with their student organizations. One of my favorite ideas involved shifting ethnic studies courses to be entirely discussion-based. The student presenting the proposal also suggested the classes focus entirely on local issues – an exposure to greater issues of diversity by meeting the students around you.
The idea was simple but almost radical in my mind. In a system like that, students would be forced to interact with worldwide issues of identity and relationships at a hyperlocal level – a far cry from sparse discussions focused on anthropologists’ experiences years ago and thousands of miles away. To satisfy a general education requirement that grew out of the aftermath of a particularly infamous theme party at a Madison fraternity in the 1980s, the idea makes sense.
I left the forum feeling hungry for more concepts like that. Williams cautioned that follow up will be necessary to put the forum’s results into action, and that will be on the students once he implements the communication lines in the coming months. I hope that the students who attended the forum, along with the greater UW community, do follow up with an eye on moving forward. Be upset, be angry, but don’t let communicating that replace conversation about the root of the problem.
Signe Brewster ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in life sciences communication.
