Leadership is not a quality easily taught; it’s just not for
everybody. The fact is though, all too often those not suited for leadership
are thrust into the role. This column is not about those people. This column is
about the people who had the potential to do great things and squandered them.

Whether irresolute, curmudgeonly or simply inept, a number of leaders on and around the University of Wisconsin campus have let down those they were elected or hired to represent.

Interim Chancellor David Ward has done a lot to embrace his interimness. Relying on token
appearances at sporting events and administration meetings, Ward lacks the charisma
that made Biddy Martin so popular among students. Moreover, his apparent
complacency in the midst of a very difficult time for higher education fails to
inspire much confidence in the man at the helm of the state’s flagship
university.

His timidity in making decisions has been equally
lackluster. Emerging every few months like an administrative Punxsutawney Phil
before catching a glimpse of a major decision in need of input, Ward has been
largely invisible to the average student.

In handing the decision over the Multicultural Student
Coalition’s eligibility decision to Student Council, Ward narrowly escaped
having to make a marginally difficult decision. Luckily, Student Council had
none of the same reservations concerning decisiveness, as its hasty and
ill-informed decision to approve the group’s eligibility came out the next
week.

One need not have traveled all the way up Bascom Hill to be
disappointed, however. A stroll over to
the Student Activities Center yields another prime example of the lengths to
which our leaders opted not to go in the name of students.

Associated Students of Madison Chair Allie Gardner’s piloting of ASM into the depths of inefficiency and pettiness – while great fodder for
editorials and depressingly wonkish drunken rants – ought to go down as a
textbook example of how not to lead an organization.

Marked by blatant nepotism, disorder at council meetings and
a lack of a single notable achievement, ASM under Gardner did what was thought
to be impossible: Student government was made even more irrelevant to the
average student at UW.

But why settle for mere irrelevance when you can take
proactive steps toward ostracizing yourself from a large portion of the Madison
population? That appears to be what Mayor Paul Soglin had in mind when he set
his sights on the Mifflin Street Block Party nearly a year ago.

Hizzoner’s treatment of the annual debauch, though worthy of
scrutiny in light of the sexual assaults and stabbings at last year’s event,
appears to be aimed more at aggravating students rather than improving the
climate of the event.

By ramping up enforcement, working to push out a prospective
sponsor and refusing to budge on his stances, Soglin has indicated his
intentions to put an end to the event once and for all. Students are not to be
trusted; alternative viewpoints are not to be considered; all those in
violation will be cited in accordance with city ordinances.

But hey, even if we have been poorly led and represented, things
are already looking up. The search for a new chancellor will begin next fall,
ASM is now stacked with a moderate-conservative supermajority and it’s not like
they can arrest everybody on Saturday.

Jake Begun ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in history and
journalism.