An Associated Students of Madison bill that asked UW-Madison to provide free tuition to black students as reparations for slavery earned national media attention in February, and now it’s inspiring student governments nationally too.
The student government at Western Kentucky University passed a bill last week entitled “Resolution to Support Reparations,” and members said Rep. Tyriek Mack, the author of the ASM bill, helped make it happen.
“When I saw a Google News alert for the bill that Tyriek Mack and other students at UW-Madison worked on, I thought that should be something that we here at Western call for as well,” Brian Anderson, one of the sponsors of the WKU bill, told The Daily Cardinal.
Anderson, a WKU Student Government Association senator, then got together with fellow Sen. Andrea Ambam and reached out to Mack to see if he would help in passing a similar bill at WKU.
Mack sent Anderson and Ambam a draft of the UW-Madison resolution, and they used it to draft their own campus-specific bill. Even at a school that Anderson called “conservative,” the bill passed the SGA 19-10.
Anderson said while he was familiar with idea of reparations before, he “didn’t even think about doing it in the form of an SGA resolution” until he heard about Mack’s legislation.
Mack proposed the UW-Madison bill to call attention to what he termed the “cognitive dissonance” between UW-Madison’s statements on diversity and inclusion and their actions.
“As students, we understand that despite the university’s rhetoric, this school is not inclusive, accessible or affordable for Black students in Wisconsin,” Mack said in February. “The university is not blind to this reality. In fact, the university’s brand and prestige benefits from their practices of exclusion and white supremacy.”
Anderson expressed the need for student government representatives to take part in the conversation on free tuition for black students at Western Kentucky.
“As representatives of the student body, it’s kind of in our wheelhouse to get this conversation started,” Anderson said. “Particularly with student perspectives on not just how students can get into college, but also how they can afford to [pay for] college.”
After ASM passed its resolution, UW-Madison spokesperson Meredith McGlone said the school supports the spirit of the resolution, but that the administration is unsure whether the reparations legislation is a legal or good way to create a more inclusive campus.
WKU President Gary Ransdell, similarly, said he appreciated the interest in the issue, but that the administration would not consider implementing the proposed policy.
