UWM needs a hand
Brookfield
Vaccines: Put Tommy in charge
It’s time to let University of Wisconsin interim-president Tommy Thompson and the U.W. System help get vaccines off the shelf and into arms. We also need a plan for who, what, where and how citizens in every category will be notified it’s their turn — vs. people making hundreds of phone calls trying to get an appointment for a vaccine. Thompson is smart enough to come up with a plan that will work.
Let’s not be another Florida or Texas with people lined up on sidewalks or in parking lots to get a vaccine. Let Tommy do it!
Linda Edmondson
Pewaukee
I am the proud parent of a new University of Wisconsin-Madison freshman. I am also a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I am very happy that my daughter is attending a great institution where she will receive a superb education at a reasonable price.
At the same time, I am quite aware of the ongoing wringing of hands about how to diversify the student body at UW-Madison, an overwhelmingly white campus. By contrast, UWM, my institution, enrolls and graduates more minority, working class and veteran students than any other UW campus. Madison faculty and administrators have launched numerous programs to recruit minority students, with little success.
Yet even as UWM enrolls a large number of minority students, it is a tuition-driven campus, as are all UWs. With the decline of state tax funding, enrollment is critical to UWM’s financial solvency. UWM, unfortunately, saw an enrollment decrease of nearly 4% with a freshman class of just over 3,200. As a result of this enrollment decline, UWM Chancellor Mark Mone has asked all units to anticipate a 5% budget cut. So while UW-Madison faculty and administrators bemoan the lack of diversity on the flagship campus, the campus with the most diverse student body must make budget cuts. These budget cuts will hurt UWM’s ability to serve all of its student, but especially minority and working class students.
If UW-Madison is truly concerned about diversity and minority student success, I suggest that faculty and administers at UW-Madison not only work harder to diversify their own campus, but also encourage the regents to hire a new UW System president who has a plan to provide more equitable funding.
Joseph A. Rodriguez
Shorewood