Letter to the editor: Non-traditional students should be better accommodated
By Cassie Wilderman | Jan. 27, 2014On any given brisk fall day around the UW – Madison, you’re likely to see the campus teeming with so-called traditional students: students in their upper teens or lower twenties, laughing with friends as they walk to class or running to catch the bus or sipping on coffee while they study. Nothing about those students is out of the ordinary—they fulfill our traditional definition of “college student” and they no doubt belong at the University. When we see somebody walking down University Ave pushing a stroller and wearing a backpack, however, we start to feel a bit uncomfortable. A student who is a parent is dissonant with our accepted definition. The same thing happens when we are sitting in class and a middle-aged student raises their hand to ask a question. The people who complicate our understanding of “college student,” in the aforementioned and other ways, are specifically known as non-traditional students.
