H -°, L 6° | Tomorrow: 
H 18°, L 6°A fair chance exists you’re reading this with a professor or TA evaluation in your hand, poised to offer scathing criticism or warm praise. With that spirit in mind, I thought it appropriate to briefly evaluate the undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin in a final summation of four years of study and journalism.
My bubble sheet yields a blanket run of “10s” for social atmosphere, beer consumption, eligible young women, extracurricular opportunities, football cheering, the Essen Haus and the Union Terrace. Like many UW undergrads, for me life here was akin to four years at an all-inclusive resort and leaving sad. Onward then, to the free-response section …
1) How would you rate the quality of discourse on campus? Henry Kissinger once said campus politics are so heated and contentious because so little is truly at stake. One need only visit a Madison protest to prove Mr. Kissinger’s point. Students attempting to exercise political leadership on campus are both hopelessly out of touch with the typical student and hopelessly unable to restrain their egos.
Start doing something about soggy French fries in the Union and stop trying to get ROTC thrown off campus. Occupying the chancellor’s office endears you to no one, and it’s cowardly besides. If you want the soldiers gone, confront them on your own, the way they used to in the ’60s. We’ll see who wins that showdown…
More constructively, if you really hate the war as much as you say you do, go study up on the history of the Middle East and of American foreign policy so we can have a civil discourse, sans the yelling. Tone down and more of us might listen.
2) Did you feel UW produced an inclusive atmosphere? While we’re at it, let’s dispense with the relentless hand wringing over “diversity,” the religious pursuit of political correctness, and own up to the philosophical orthodoxy that dominates the liberal arts on our campus and call a spade a spade. If this school going to draw a student body principally from within the borders of Wisconsin and from its elite high schools, the population will consist of white, suburban, upper-middle-class Wisconsinites.
Professors and administrators can stop foisting their guilt about this situation upon students at every available pedagogical opportunity. Stop teaching history in purely racial terms and preaching identity politics. Heteronormative white capitalist supremacists pushing consumer culture on the unsuspecting masses is not the world’s most pressing societal ill. Individuals can overcome their prejudices and predilections without authoritarian demagoguery. If that statement makes you noxious, you haven’t overcome yours yet. If you don’t know what heteronormative means, be proud.
3) Did you feel you had adequate opportunity to have your ideas heard? Few professors and fewer teaching assistants vote or donate to Republican candidates. This can be documented empirically. More properly, they find mainstream ideas on social mores repugnant.
Opposition to gay marriage or abortion are largely foreign concepts, considered unworthy of serious intellects in our faculty lounges. This trend shows no signs of abating anytime soon; one only need look at the politics of the future professors in the Teaching Assistants’ Association. Simply admit the fact that though balanced views may be equally tolerated in UW classrooms, they are far from equally respected. Post-modern relativism is the new orthodoxy. All ideas have worth, we are taught, and we must put all cultures and philosophies on a level playing field, unless they offend our progressive sensibilities. To do otherwise is uncouth.
Malarkey. If we are relentlessly sifting and winnowing in pursuit of truth we deny exists, we aren’t sifting and winnowing. We’re playing in the sandbox.
4) Would you recommend this school to a friend? Lots of ideas are floating around this campus. Many are both bogus and tolerable. Thankfully, they don’t really count until we leave, and with a bit of effort students can still cull the wheat from the chaff before walking across the Kohl Center stage. After spending four years in an environment where ideas don’t have deep consequences, and having observed first-hand the truly bizarre ideas that find ready acceptance here, I’ve become hungry to work at the intersection of ideas and action. So, perhaps not quite how it intended, this university succeeded in its mission.
John Stuart Mill was right: To sort this mess of a world out, one must invest himself enough to listen along for a time. I hope we do that going forward. Four years is a good start, and has been.
Eric B. Cullen ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in history. He thanks The Badger Herald’s readers and all the one-time colleagues who became lifetime friends, names more numerous than space allows.
IP hash: 991ed6bb
Oh fuck off, you sanctimonious prick.
We’ve all read this editorial of yours six times before, and it’s not good writing.
You’re a Republican hack on a Democratic campus, and that makes you oppressed, we get it.
IP hash: 3c34cc34
Cullen-When you’re pushing papers in some crappy office cubicle you’re gonna be wishin that you had those terrible liberal academics listening to your ideas. Guess what happens in the business world when you disagree with your boss in public? You get fired.
Good luck fuckwit. I hope you fall off the bus on the way back to shitville and get run over by a bunch of gays on their way to a pride parade.
IP hash: 74accf1d
Let’s hear it for common sense! I love your article. It really exposes the hypocrisy and pettiness present on this campus.
Unfortunately for them, both of the miseducated students who wrote comments before me will probably never leave the cozy liberal haven of Madison and test their ideas in the real world. They are a perfect example of the intolerance and ignorance that exists on the UW-Madison campus.
IP hash: 3c34cc34
I’m not intolerant, and I am in the “rewal world”. That’s why I am pointing out that no one gives a shit what you beleive in the “real world”. YOu need to just keep your mouth shut and toe the party line if you want to get ahead. Its called the corporate world and morals and ethics are so far down the laddre of what’s important that its a joke. His professors might not agree with him-mostly because his opinions are poorly reasoned and not because they are conservative-but at least they care what Cullen has to say.
No one in the corporate world will give a fuck unless its how to better arrange the morning memo on the page or how to input data more efficiently-hardly large ethical philsophizing.
IP hash: 91b5d4c5
Three Cheers for Eric! He’s the first straight male who managed to make it through his entire academic career without convincing a girl to even kiss his wussy face. Eric couldn’t even bag a fatty nevermind his chances with a smelly or a hairy girl. Hip Hip Hooray.
IP hash: 3bee8336
Oh man, is this trite crap going to be online all fucking summer. Poor conservative white mans burden. What are you to do with all of the power in the world?
IP hash: 3c34cc34
So if a conservative tells me the moon is made of green cheese profs are supposed to give him an A on his paper because telling him he is wrong might challenge his beleifs?
The problem with many conservatives is that they feel that their views are targeted for being conservative, they are not. They are targeted because they are poorly reasoned and argued illogically.
When conservatism starts taking into account logic and reason and not making claims based on preheld biases then profs will be more willing to engage with it.
IP hash: 3c34cc34
There is a massive logical flaw in this argument as there are in all of this jokers articles. I can’t beleive he was allowed to graduate. If anything says that this schools standards are low it is that.
Listen carefully Cullen:
You argue that there are “truths” and that not everything is “relative” on one hand.
On the other hand, you argue that your views should be accepted. If they are not, it is because people don’t like conservatives ie. that your opinion is equally valid. This contradicts waht you implied above. Accordingto the above statement people should accept your opinions base don their truth not on whether they are conservative or liberal.
Did it ever occur to you that the reason people don’t like your ideas is not because they are conservative but because they are simply wrong?
and yet you cling to them like a rat to a sinking ship.
IP hash: c6226427
I would say this piece is an acurate representation of what goes on at the UW. The criticisms are fair, but nothing new.
IP hash: 3c34cc34
Cullen is a joke. That smirk up there shows just how heavily his white man’s burden rests on him
IP hash: edc8bdf2
“Malarkey. If we are relentlessly sifting and winnowing in pursuit of truth we deny exists, we aren't sifting and winnowing. We're playing in the sandbox.”
Brilliant. Thanks, Cullen. No really - it’s one of the most profound things I’ve seen come out of the Herald this year.
IP hash: 75e44dd3
There is a truth and I have sifted and winnowed it out fo your article: You are a fucking smug, whitebread, jackass.
IP hash: 292c0015
fuck all those liberal bitches— i guess i’d rather be conservative with money in my pockey and a bitch on my arm than an idealistical moron like most of the professors and students at UW. There’s a reason why Kerry didn’t win, and a big reason is most people don’t belief the hype. Only stuffy, living in the 1960s professor and pot smoking hippies that live in madison… I guess the white man’s burden is just to do whatever they think is right. Let the left-wingers bitch and whine like little girls while conservatives continue to rule the USA. And it’s not the white man’s burden—it’s the working man’s burden…
IP hash: 292c0015
I love to hear liberals whine— it’s great— Kerry could win no matter how many Springstein concerts he would have had on W. Washington.
IP hash: 2291e592
Bush stole the election.
Democracy is dead.
All of the best places to live in the country and world are liberal. Why not go move to a small town in Alabama and see how you like the Walmart money?
Conservatives complain about Madison. So why not leave? That’s what ou are always telling us to do.
The truth will out eventually. Bush will be impeached and tried for war crimes.
IP hash: f915e934
PICKETERS NEEDED!!!
URGENT!!!
TERRORISTS PLAN TO MEET ON OUR CAMPUS NEXT WEEK!!!
SEE http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1100
Draft Agenda
Friday, June 24 Grainger Hall of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin 975 University Avenue
7:00-8:30PM Beyond Chutzpah: The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Professor of Political Theory at DePaul University, and author of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, will present a keynote address that is free and open to the public.
Saturday, June 25 Grainger Hall of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin 975 University Avenue
8:30-9:30AM Registration and breakfast
9:30-10:15AM Welcome/Ice-Breakers and About the US Campaign
Members of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project will welcome conference participants to Madison and review conference logistics with attendees. Kymberlie Quong Charles, US Campaign Membership Outreach Coordinator, will introduce the US Campaign, its goals, membership criteria, organizing strategy, taskforces, days of action, etc.
10:30AM-12:00PM Skills-Building Workshop Session #1
Workshops will be practical, hands-on, skills-building sessions that will increase the effectiveness of conference attendees' activism. Conference attendees will choose three out of four workshops. For the media and grassroots advocacy workshops, conference attendees will be encouraged to plug into national taskforces facilitated by the US Campaign. Scheduled workshop facilitators are:
Divestment: Mohammed Abed, al-Awda Wisconsin, Mark Evenson & Nancy Turner, Faculty, UW-Platteville, and The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals Sister City Projects: Jennifer Loewenstein, George Arida, Jim Goronson, Kathy Walsh, Madison-Rafah Sister City Project Grassroots Advocacy: Josh Ruebner, US Campaign Legislative Task Force Media: Rima Mutreja, Palestine Media Watch/US Campaign Media Task Force
12:00PM-1:30PM Lunch & informal caucuses/affinity groups
NOTE: Lunch is not being provided at the conference. Conference attendees will be directed to low-cost food options near campus.
Conference attendees will organize themselves into informal caucuses/affinity groups in order to network and strategize by common interest. Examples could be by religious, ethnic, racial, professional, or geographic identity.
1:30PM-3:00PM Skills-Building Workshop Session #2
3:00PM-3:30PM Break
3:30PM-5:00PM Skills-Building Workshop Session #3
5:00PM-5:30PM Conclusions & Evaluations
Conference organizers will facilitate a discussion on lessons learned from the conference and encourage people and groups to plug into the work of the US Campaign. Conference attendees who are willing to circulate their contact information can do so and will be encouraged to fill out conference evaluation forms before leaving.
The Crossing, 1127 University Ave.
5:30PM-7:30PM Social Hour/Dinner
The conference will move across campus to The Crossing, a campus religious center, for a social hour and Middle Eastern dinner. Both conference attendees and the general public are invited to the dinner, which will cost $10.
7:30PM-9:00PM Rebuilding Homes, Rebuilding Hopes in Gaza
Cindy and Craig Corrie, the parents of Rachel Corrie, a US peace activist who was killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, and Khaled and Samah Nasrallah, family members who lived in the house that Rachel tried to prevent from being demolished when she was killed, will present the story that links their families together. The panelists will be introduced by Joe Carr, a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams, who will also peform a spoken word tribute to Rachel Corrie. The panelists will speak about their involvement with the Rebuilding Homes Alliance and there will be a fundraiser for the US Campaign and the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project. The event is free and open to the public.
Sunday, June 26 The Crossing, 1127 University Ave.
9:00AM-9:30 AM Breakfast
9:30-12:00PM Strategizing Session
Conference attendees will group themselves by geography (local, regional, state-wide) in order to strategize and develop a plan of action for their area in an informal setting. Strategizing sessions will be facilitated by conference organizers to encourage the formation of new groups where none exist, to strengthen existing groups, and to create local, regional, and state-wide coalitions that are plugged into the work and organizing strategy of the US Campaign.