Biddy Martin needs to start talking.

No, nothing of major consequence will happen to the university if she refuses to indulge us more with the fruits of her customarily opaque oratory. Regardless of whether Martin decides to start opening up, state funding for the university will most likely decrease, tuition will go up and the Associated Students of Madison will continue to possess all the characteristics of a limp phallus. Now more than ever, we are confronted with the true inability of any one person — even a university chancellor — to influence the fate of forty thousand people in a climate of severe economic downturn.

What doesn’t need to happen, however, is the university’s suffering from a chancellor who is increasingly removed from students, one who has the ability to listen and decide but not communicate her goals in any meaningful fashion.

Such fears only seem to be even more justified after Martin’s vote to allow Meriter Hospital in conjunction with Madison Surgery Center, which the University of Wisconsin has a stake in, to perform second-trimester abortions. The vote was widely contested in the city, with the usual assortment of anti-abortion activists insisting that St. Peter was going to have a field day rejecting any number of doctors who perform second-trimester abortions from the pearly gates. Meanwhile, the abortion rights camp insisted, contrary to the dictates of the Supreme Court on the issue, that infants have essentially zero rights to life until they leave their mother’s wombs.

The only homogenous trend throughout the protests was the glaringly obvious lack of unanimity on the issue. Even Kyle Szarzynski — usually this page’s champion of that intellectually dubious school of political thought known as “radical progressivism” — argued both sides had valid arguments regarding second-trimester abortions.

Martin, as a voting member of the board of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, had every legal right to help decide whether or not the service should be offered. Whether or not she had the moral authority to do so is another matter. Certainly, as any reasonable observer of the controversy can point out, there are valid arguments on both sides. And opinion on second-trimester abortions is by no means unanimous, even at one of America’s most liberal universities. So why, when asked why she stood by her decision, did Martin simply answer, “I thought it was the right decision yesterday, and I think so today”? Additionally, when pressed about her vote, Martin added an excruciatingly feeble, “It’s a very difficult and complicated issue.”

To be fair, it is difficult not to admire Martin’s straightforward honesty in admitting tuition was going to increase. Such a statement indicates a willingness to respect the intelligence of students as opposed to misguided idealism or populist cravings to tell them what they want to hear. That being said, if Martin is going to vote either way on one of the most contentious issues in the country, she had better be prepared to justify why she did so. Refusing to logically present her arguments not only weakens the position of those who won Martin’s support in the vote. Such indifference to inquiry from students — this paper included — casts Martin in the role of a bureaucrat content to let those who look to her for guidance wallow in their own intellectual stew. Martin should be prepared to defend what she believes in — and turn herself into a feasible leader of this university in the process. It won’t be as easy as generic platitudes about the “complicated” nature of the issue, but simply stated, it is the right thing to do.

Former Chancellor John Wiley earned this writer’s belated respect for his last-minute column in Madison Magazine, decrying the pervasive influence of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce on both the politics of the state and the future of this university. And despite widespread accusations that the parting shot amounted to hackery, the WMC is now stating it will no longer lobby in the future. Whether or not the WMC actually intends to keep its promise in a meaningful way is dubious at best, but the fact of the matter is, Wiley’s efforts accomplished infinitely more than the thousand olive branches extended to the morally repugnant organization throughout the years. As for Martin, she should make at least a trifling effort to realize that for discretion to be the better part of valor, your opponents have to know you are capable of being valorous at all.

Sam Clegg ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in history and economics.