The UW-Madison community received pointers on dealing with a state legislature increasingly hostile to the university from one of the legislature's own, 1986 UW-Madison graduate state Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison.
Pocan addressed the dynamics between the UW System and state politics, UW-Madison's public relations blunders, and his views on education spending in the state budget at a Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education forum Wednesday titled ""Higher Education and Future State Budgets.""
Pocan serves on the Joint Finance Committee, which decides budget issues. He stressed how debates about education spending tend to be more about politics than policies but said, ""there should be no entity stronger"" than UW-Madison in politics.
Anthony Adams, executive director of the United Council of UW Students, raised the issue, ""every time tuition goes up, it prices some people out."" He said it is never a one-to-one ratio between tuition increases and increases in student financial aid.
""You're going to have increases, realistically,"" Pocan replied. ""The question becomes ‘What can you do then?'"" Pocan said the governor tried to put money from tuition increases back into student aid, but Republicans in the legislature cut the numbers.
""One of our overall goals on behalf of the UW for the next budget cycle is how to make sure we have more funds available for higher education,"" Pocan said, stressing the issue included everything from student aid to funding faculty and staff.
Pocan also said UW-Madison has had a number of public relations ""faux pas"" that have given fodder to critics of the university, including its handling of the controversy surrounding lecturer Kevin Barrett.
Emphasizing what he called the difficulty of working in a Republican-controlled legislature, Pocan said for base partisan issues, it is not possible to have discussions because issues get lost in political arguments. Topics like stem cell research and domestic partner benefits become ""lightning rods"" for UW-Madison, attracting negative attention from Republicans, according to Pocan.
Noel Radomski, director of WISCAPE, called the forum topic ""timely, very critical.""
""Our attempts here at WISCAPE are to bring in people from, in this case, the legislature, to give us some frank comments that may answer questions about university-state relations and about critical issues such as financial aid,"" he said.
Wednesday's event was the second in WISCAPE's fall Brown Bag Forum series, held in the Education building.
