Worried about a reduced focus on diversity initiatives at UW-Madison, students from the Multicultural Student Coalition, Associated Students of Madison and other campus groups met with Chancellor John Wiley, Provost Peter Spear and Associate Vice Chancellor Bernice Durand to discuss the recent closing of the Department of Student Affairs.
Following the announcement of Vice Chancellor Paul Barrow's leave of absence, Wiley and other administration said they decided the best course of action was to disband the office entirely, citing a lack of cohesiveness in the programs it served.
\It was a fairly novel organization that was only put in place a few years ago specifically to respond to an offer that Paul received from another institution,"" Wiley said. ""So we rearranged some offices here and we did it as an experiment. Some parts of it worked pretty well and some parts were a little harder to fit together ... We're trying very hard in absolutely guaranteeing this succeeds to make sure that all the programs that were in place are smoothly transitioned to new arrangements.""
Explaining their decision, Wiley, Spear and Durand stressed the university was returning to a system it had used for 148 years.
Students voiced apprehension to a possible lack of concern on the part of the administration to raising diversity on campus and making the campus climate a more comfortable environment for minority students. Spear responded by explaining how worried the administration was about the consequences of their decision.
""When we discussed doing this, quite frankly we worried about the perception of students and if it would look like and perhaps feel like to the students, that they somehow lost a single representative,"" Spear said. ""And we really struggled with that and felt that still the changes, in the sense of the efficiency of getting things done, made a lot of sense-although we were worried about exactly these concerns.""
UW-Madison senior and MCSC member Maria Delgado said she appreciated the time taken by campus administration to meet with the students, but was unsatisfied with the information provided.
""I've heard these answers before,"" she said. ""It's the same rhetoric over and over ... They shouldn't place this on the backs of the students. It's not solely our responsibility to improve the climate on campus.""
