The Second (and not last) unveiling of the Wisconsin Idea Partnership

Today, UW System launched their Wisconsin Idea Partnership website. I’d just have to say that it is fairly disappointing to say the least. Let’s go through the website and see what we have.

On the front page we have the same rhetoric that we have been hearing on multiple occasions, like the emergency Board of Regents meeting on February 15th or in interviews across the state. An interesting claim that is being made is that the WIP will “provid[e] the maximum flexibility to all University of Wisconsin Chancellors to lead their institutions in the most effective and efficient manner possible.” Really we don’t know this. If the WIP does gain traction in the Joint Finance Committee we don’t know what the statute changes would be. So far UW System has not released any statute changes that they would like to see (more on this later). My best guess would be that they would want to streamline it and have a simple Chapter 36 with the least amount of clutter possible. This would mean that the flexibilities would not be granted to the individual campuses but to UW System Administration. It would be up to their discretion as to what campuses get what flexibilities. I foresee this allocation being very controlled where UW System and the Board of Regents will hoard these new powers for themselves and administrations at the universities would simply be advisory. This is why individuals have stated that the WIP is the actual plan implemented, over the New Badger Partnership, that these powers must be statutorily passed down to the campuses, and like I said, I do not see that happening.

Next let’s click on the “Details” tab. Well surprisingly there are no details of the plan whatsoever. All that is posted there are summary documents after summary documents. You’d think that if you chose to label the tap details that you would actually have details available. A more adequate name should be the “Summary” tab. It’s also surprising to me that if they’ve been working on these ideas for such a long time, why aren’t they able to propose actual changes?

Looking through the rest of the pages, it simply looks like they just cobbled together any piece of pro-WIP or con-NBP literature that they could. If I wanted this I could simply go to the great BadgerFutures website (and frankly I think their list of articles and statements is better than what UW System gives). This begs the question of how committed is UW System to actually trying to get the WIP passed?

And someone took notice of this. Governor Walker stated a few days ago that:

[t]he University of Wisconsin System showed up with some bullet points at the tail end of the budget debate and said they wanted to be a part of it. Logistically, you can’t make that happen.

Now if I had been working on something for such a long time, which apparently President Pruitt has been doing for a long time as a member of the Board of Regents, why did they only come with bullet points to the Governor. If they had actually wanted to make a push for the Wisconsin Idea Partnership, why did they not have state statutes written up? Where were they during the rest of the budget process? Walker says himself that his staff worked with UW-Madison on Chapter 37 multiple times per week for almost two and a half months. Reilly and Pruitt can moan all they want about Chancellor Martin not informing them of her discussions with the Governor’s office, but as the leaders of the UW System, these two men should have been doing the exact same thing as the Chancellor did. They should have been meeting with all of the gubernatorial candidates before the election. They should have been working during the transition with the Governor’s staff, which even ASM did. Waiting this long to try and start adding things into the budget is just stupid (oh great I bashed Kevin Reilly again).

To me, this is not the form of leadership that I want. I want someone who is going to be proactive and get things done. So Regents, go ahead and pass your resolutions. Propose your plan. At this point it is all too late. If the details of this plan don’t come out by the time that UW System presents to JFC this time next week, then the WIP should be considered dead. Plain and simple.

An Inexperienced Leader~Samuel Seering