The Madison Initiative for Undergraduates' Oversight Committee held its final meeting last week, deliberating which 114 proposals to suggest Chancellor Biddy Martin fund. On its face, the meeting's intelligent discussion and probing analyses would have satisfied the standards expected of a group proposing to spend $6.2 million in our tuition. Unfortunately, it happened to be preceded by at least four other closed-door sessions that have shrouded the entire process in secrecy and suspicion. UW officials eventually announced they were opening the Committee's final meeting after intense pressures, but instead of admitting wrongdoing, they agreed to open the meetings ""in the spirit of transparency and openness."" How thoughtful.
Whether the Committee members were just being stubbornly reticent, blunderingly naïve or quietly conniving, they should have held themselves to the same level of scrutiny as the Student Advisory Committee, whose open meetings earlier this semester produced a similar list of recommendations that Martin will also consider on Feb. 16. Any argument that the Oversight Committee's open deliberations would have made its members more vulnerable to departmental criticism than members on the Student Advisory Committee is clearly dispelled since all ranking was done via secret vote anyway.
Although the Oversight Committee members likely had the best of intentions, their legitimacy and the legitimacy of their recommendations could use a boost. For starters, they should go out of their way to explain to the student body why the proposals they are about to submit to Martin are needed and how they jive with the MIU's core missions.
One of those missions is supporting bottle-necked, general education courses, many of which are in the College of Letters and Sciences and required for most students. Of the 114 proposals, 80 have included some benefit for L&S. Many of its majors, from economics to chemistry, are on the A-list for funding, both on the MIU Oversight and Student Committees.
Perhaps the Oversight Committee's biggest task—which Chancellor Martin no doubt shares—will be shaving down each of the many worthy proposals' budgets down to spread the MIU love as efficiently as possible.
The Oversight Committee must also make clear why it is funding some student services over others. A student advising proposal, for instance, would fund late-night office hours in assorted campus buildings, including College Library. We agree that students often need advisers to make sense of their garbled DARS reports, but is a $400,000 investment in cross-major advising really the optimal starting point for solving excessive demand for advising?
The Committee needs to tell students what these proposals will do for them and why they were chosen. Now is not the time to whisper your reasoning to the Chancellor. Take the initiative. Tell the students.
