Not all students of color find UW conservative
Elizabeth Medhin should speak for herself when she paints all students of color into a helpless box (""UW-Madison's liberal image an illusion,"" Nov. 7). For one, as a student of color, I have never felt that it was my duty or obligation to serve as the ""black culture"" teacher to my friends and neighbors. If I see injustice or ignorance going on, I will call the offending individual on it, but I refuse to be the cultural police.
In terms of numbers, Medhin needs to realize that as a state school in a very white state, UW-Madison will always lag in recruiting students of color. As long as we have discriminatory tuition policies, UW-Madison will be like the rest of Wisconsin and Minnesota'quite white. In addition, Medhin blasts students who ""only"" have one student of color friend or have only one minority in their class. Ms. Medhin, use some reasoning. The one in 300 case seems like it is on the extreme end of the spectrum. I counter that if most classes fall in with the racial proportions of the university. Moreover, I do not want to be tokenized by having people be my friend just because I am black.
Liberalism is based on the eyes of the beholder. Perhaps from where Medhin comes from, Madison seems conservative. Like any university, there is always room for improvement. Medhin must not see the student-of-color population here as a homogenous population. Compared to some of the other universities in America, I think Ms. Medhin should be counting her blessings.
Governor's race article excludes Thompson
I am writing to complain about your recent article concerning the 2002 Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign (""Governor race gets early start,"" Nov. 5). It is quite shocking that you failed to mention the candidacy of Ed Thompson. Ed is the most exciting candidate to come into Wisconsin politics in a long time. Not only has he received enormous attention at the statewide level, appearing in the Wisconsin State Journal, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Green Bay Gazette and Wausau Daily Herald, but he is the only candidate that has had an article in The New York Times'a feat none of the current candidates will be able to claim in the near future. In fact, your paper interviewed Ed while he was on campus. In addition, Ed has had a student group organized on campus for the last two months (well earlier than some of his rivals), that has more than twenty members, and it was the only one of these student groups to march in the Homecoming parade. Ed is the only viable third-party candidate to come out of Wisconsin since the progressives. He has already broken the Wisconsin record for money raised by a third-party candidate and he has yet to officially declare. Ed will win this election against the lame-duck republican candidate and an extremely un-unified democratic party. It is time that your paper gave him his due recognition.
