In 10 years, when today's fifth and sixth graders are high-stepping around this campus like they own the place, I hope there's a little commemorative plaque lying about, somewhere real unavoidable and inconvenient that reminds those greasy runts of what I had to sacrifice so that that walk of theirs could be so spectacular. When they mosey down the so-called East Campus Mall, or past the shiny new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery; as they traverse sidewalks atop efficient new utility systems in Library Mall or sip the newest flavored water in the no-longer poopy Union South; when they feel not-depressed when they head off to class in a normal-looking Humanities Building or gaze upon the finished product of whatever-the-heck-they're-doing right now to the Kohl Center lawn, I hope the Badger students of tomorrow are somehow made aware that it was alums like me that put up with a whole lot of walking around shit so they could have all that.
I can't quite remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure this campus was still a campus - and not a work in progress - when I started my career here. State Street had yet to be torn up, the lovely Peterson building was up to something useful, Campus Square, mostly useless but still in existence, was just a stone's throw from my dorm and housed a theatre I never exactly went to, yet still prided myself on explaining to visitors that you could buy beer there. Ogg was still Ogg; a dump, one that you could make fun of your friends for living in, and not a status symbol. And for the most part, sidewalks were walked upon and not caged inside fences and walked around. Seriously, if our old Chancellor had a shady side deal going with John Wiley & Sons textbook publishing, this new one has some serious ties to National Rent-a-Fence. And if by some chance those fences do come down before the year is out, this campus is going to look less familiar to me than when I first got here.
Which is fine... I guess. It'd be hard to argue that downtown Madison was not a very dumpy place outside of Capitol Square and the Fluno Center a few years ago. The dorms were dumpy, the bars, buses and buildings were dumpy, heck let's be honest, we were all a little dumpy back then, too. But it was Madison. It was our Madison. If I come back in 10 years to let loose at a football game, it's not going to be that Madison, it's going to be their Madison.
I guess that's what happens when you get old, except I shouldn't be feeling old already. I don't need to be telling underclassmen where Madhatters was when I was their age just yet; nor do I want to hear how great things will look when it's all said and done either (though I have my doubts about whether that will ever happen).
It's not that it isn't about time Madison got a boob job, it's that she should have done it before I dated her. By all accounts, I'm sure things will look nice when the dust settles and the cranes finally come down. I'm sure it will be nice when students living in Lucky are less so thanks to the new Luckier 888 that's bound to be built; when the New Ogg is back to being the old one again and they finally put an IHOP on State Street and Bascom Hill has two escalators running up and down it. It will be great... for them. It's like your parents finally getting cable after you move out. It's stupendous... for them.
Alanis Morissette had a word for these types of situations: ironic. And while there may not actually be anything ironic about all these improvements being made to the campus just in time for me to never really benefit from them, yet be very much inconvenienced by nonetheless, I still feel her pain. When I walk past the future site of a green-powered Hillel center and realize I'll never have the chance to sucker one of my Jewish friends into taking me there some day, it feels just like a black fly in my chardonnay, or like a death row pardon, two minutes too late.
Would you've thought... it figures? E-mail David at dhottinger@wisc.edu and rant.
