When coming to UW-Madison, freshmen and transfer students look for new freedoms, new friends, networking and new opportunities. Unfortunately, many students are not prepared for the huge climate adjustment. And the reality hits much harder than the brutal Wisconsin winters. Minority students, including but not limited to people of color and international students, walk into a sea of white in more ways than one. Even majority students who come from very diverse cities are unprepared for Madison's campus climate. ""Campus climate"" carries various connotations on the UW-Madison campus, because the atmosphere is perceived differently between majority and minority groups.
For some minority students, campus climate is a buzzword because of the failed Plan 2008, while for some majority students it holds no negativity at all. To some, when thinking about Madison, the campus climate is liberal. One junior student in the First Wave Scholarship Program had this to say about Madison's liberality: ""We're liberal, but we're not open to change."" For this particular article I will define campus climate as the tone that the university's environment gives to its students weighted by comfortability in classes, extracurriculars and leisure activities.
Administrators and faculty are aware of this culture shock and have dedicated the new initiative, called ""Inclusive Excellence,"" to counteract the negative beliefs.
Programs such as PEOPLE, Posse, the Academic Advancement Program (AAP), the Center for Educational Opportunity (CEO) and the Summer Collegiate Experience (SCE), help to support underrepresented students through this mass culture shock. These programs enable students to build smaller communities within Madison. But what about the rest of campus?
All students have the privilege of attending lectures and discussion sections, however certain communities may feel confined due to the racial disparities that exist on campus that can alter their focus. Knowing what campus climate is and how it looks on our campus, there is only one unanswered question: Why is it so important? A study conducted by Jeffrey Milem completed at Harvard University explains just this: ""Increased diversity is no guarantee for academic success for students of color, but that success depends on the adaptability of the institution to the needs of those students."" The university's involvement in creating a more inclusive campus is essential to all students' success. From this, it is important to note that a direct correlation between underrepresented students, this institution and success does exist. A program that can bridge the gap between, thus furthering their success is entitled Inclusive Excellence.
Through frameworks such as Inclusive Excellence, UW-Madison has acknowledged this need. Programs fostered by the Office of Diversity and Climate and the Multicultural Student Center are designated to improve the campus climate to level the playing field, so to speak. As Chancellor Biddy Martin has made known, ""excellence cannot exist without diversity,"" and that's what altering campus climate is all about, channelling excellence through diversity on campus.
Bekah Blocker is a member of the MultiCultural Student Coalition. Please send any responses and inquiries to mcsc_exec@lists.wisc.edu
