Fiscal Crisis at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

From an e-mail widely circulated among faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.  The author is anonymous, but our sources say the analysis resonates among the faculty of that institution.  Indeed, the UWM faculty is up in arms about what is happening.

Dear UWM Department Chairs,

At your discretion, please forward the message below to your departmental faculty and teaching staff. This message details the root causes of our institution’s current structural deficit.

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to you anonymously to relay some of the analyses that have been assembled in recent months through activity of the Natural Sciences Executive committee. This committee was formed to respond to the rapidly deteriorating state of the College of L&S [Letters and Sciences] and UWM budgets. The analyses were undertaken using the campus and system databases of expenditures particularly those data available from the office of institutional research and from IPEDS [Integrated Post Secondary Data System] data. Despite any counter argument that may be offered in response to this message, these data are objective and as accurate and telling as any available. While it is common to be selective and promote notions that most benefit those who undertook the analysis, this did not occur in this instance. These are trends and numbers that describe the causes of the current dire financial state of this institution.

The overall assessment is that UWM is poorly administered and has no galvanizing vision. Our administrators control the lines of funding and have distributed funds in a rather haphazard manner, largely within their own ranks, in response to numerous individual and group solicitations. These numerous relative small affirmative fiscal decisions attempt to appease the solicitor(s) without incorporating long-term enrollment and funding revenue considerations into any strategy. This has resulted in a large expansion of positions and unit costs that have greatly exceeded UWM’s revenue streams. If such an expansion had not occurred a large fraction of the current 38 million dollar structural deficit would not have accrued. It is important to remember that this deficit is independent of recent state reductions in funding.

Some fraction of the data for this analysis is available from Professor Kyle Swanson’s website: [here]. We all owe Kyle a debt for his relentless acquisition and analysis that has exposed the true costs at UWM. Trends many of us have long suspected to exist now have thorough objective analyses behind them.

Some of the dominant trends or conclusions are as follows (in no particular order):

1) Academic units consistently get handed budget cuts, yet overall expenditures on salary increased by $17.2m (7.3%; +85.2 FTE [Full Time Equivalent]) from 2011 to 2015.

2) Instructional FTE has increased by 116 (2080 to 2196; 5.6%) despite a 9.1% decrease in in the number of credit hours offered. Teaching academic staff FTE has increased 14.7% (589 to 676 FTE), while faculty numbers have fallen from 836 to 808 FTE.

3) Limited Employees (administrator types) are multiplying, as there are 27 more FTE in Fall 2015 compared to Fall 2011. The overall pay pool increased by $3.7m, or 23.4%.

4) Faculty and support staff in academic units are routinely ignored for salary equity considerations or simply told that no monies for raises or merit are available. However, it is starkly obvious that if you want a career path at UWM, it is best by some considerable margin to be in the administration. Average pay within the administration has increased by 11.2% over the prior four years (numerous administrators have received 30% or greater increases over this period). It appears that being able to set the budgets is a primary corrupting influence.

This is indelible, our administrators should no longer be seen as the stewards of our institution’s budgets. Whether they realize it or not (and I suspect they do not) they have become the primary drain on our threadbare resources at the expense of our core functions.

5) If you examine only non-instructional UWM employees earning greater than $80K per year, salaries have increased on average by a staggering 9.5% per annum since 2011. In addition the university has added 45 FTE in this salary category in the last four years.

6) Total expenditures on non-academic activities have expanded greatly since the 2010 Goldwater report that suggested UWM had a lean administration. This seems to have been a call-to-arms in terms of non-academic expenditures. During the last 5 years UWM has increased the percentage support spending from ~30% of the budget to almost 38%. This accounts for the bulk of our current $38 M structural deficit.

7) Despite the proliferation of support (and to a lesser extent instructional) positions and the rapid growth rate of administrative salaries none of the core issues facing the university have abated. Our student retention numbers have not changed and our average time to graduation is vastly too long. The reason for this is that only at the interface can these trends be influenced, yet all of the efforts (PASS, advising, the bloat in Student Affairs etc) and expenditures designed to correct these trends have been centralized, out of the instructional departments .

The Remedy

The remedy proposed by the Chancellor is almost beyond comprehension and indicates the depth of the problems we face. Yet another massive unruly committee manned by the very individuals benefiting from the current budgetary debacle; 18 of the 24 members of this committee report either to the Provost or to Robin van Harpen. These are hardly the people likely to make the only decision that can save this institution: Support activities (ie administration) must be confined to an unchanging percentage of total revenues (30% is a suggested healthy number), such that the only way these costs can expand is when the University as a whole prospers.

Instead what we hear (admittedly as rumor) is that teaching support positions are the primary initial target of budgetary cuts. The individuals that teach a large fraction of our high enrollment service courses (at very low cost). That is, the instructors who enable our campus scholarly activities by keeping faculty teaching at a level conducive to research. Eliminating a significant fraction of these positions will see research on this campus come to a precipitous halt as faculty fill the ranks at the expense of their research programs.

In an effort to rally a collective sense of outrage, I would like to remind you all that there are only two groups of employees at UWM that en masse add to the bottom line, these are faculty and teaching academic staff. They are the only individuals able to bring money to the institution, yet this group has been ignored and I would argue maligned by current administrative actions. Instead of being seen as the institution’s primary resource we are regarded as a difficult group of subordinates. I will submit that the apparently unending expansion of non-academic functions is highly unlikely to solve our current budgetary state. We exist at the whim of high-cost, short-sighted administrators that are for the most part inept at grasping the state of the institution or understanding that its prime functions are, education and research.

Our future is being decided in open meetings held in the regent’s room on Wednesdays from 3-5 - I suggest we all attend.

Those of us who prefer the private sector to public near monopolies, and who are associated with a private sector institution (like Marquette) might be tempted to feel a bit of schadenfreude.

That would be very badly misguided.

The simple fact is that the pathologies that afflict UWM can be found at Marquette.  An excellent piece of investigative journalism from the Marquette Tribune in 2014 discussed the issue.

Marquette, an older, better established and moderately prestigious institution can perhaps better tolerate their ill effects, but they make Marquette much inferior to what it ought to be.

Some key passages from the letter above:

The overall assessment is that UWM is poorly administered and has no galvanizing vision. Our administrators control the lines of funding and have distributed funds in a rather haphazard manner, largely within their own ranks, in response to numerous individual and group solicitations.

And then:

Average pay within the administration has increased by 11.2% over the prior four years (numerous administrators have received 30% or greater increases over this period). It appears that being able to set the budgets is a primary corrupting influence.

Further:

If you examine only non-instructional UWM employees earning greater than $80K per year, salaries have increased on average by a staggering 9.5% per annum since 2011. In addition the university has added 45 FTE in this salary category in the last four years.

And then:

During the last 5 years UWM has increased the percentage support spending from ~30% of the budget to almost 38%. This accounts for the bulk of our current $38 M structural deficit.

In sum: administrative bloat. And a lack of concern for the people who do teaching and research.  De facto, this is a lack of concern for students. Common in all academia.  And certainly at UWM, and at Marquette.

Note that the assessment that in 2010 that UWM had a lean administration.  We doubt this was true in an absolute sense, but may well have been true in a relative sense (compared to the bloat at other institutions).  But then the bloat ramped up.

Who was Chancellor of UWM from 2011 until 2014?  Michael Lovell.

Note:   Professor Kyle Swanson has not responded to our requests for comment.

Update

More information: one thing noted by Arts & Letters faculty at UWM is the plethora of “programs” that are often marginally viable, don’t serve the core mission of the institution, and drain away resources. This, unfortunately, is what one would expect from university administrators. There is a big incentive for them to have “initiatives” on their résumés. That sounds impressive, and by the time it becomes obvious that the initiatives did not work out so well, the administrator is probably gone, having moved on to another institution (probably to a more desirable position, due to the “initiatives” he or she had implemented).

Elitist UWM Professor: Sneering at Ordinary Americans

Browsing through the letters column of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sometimes turns up some bizarre items.

This one caught out attention.

What’s attractive?

The xenophobic and jingoist rant against immigration is likely to find itself running out of gas in the foreseeable future. Immigration from variously skilled and resourced nations to the United States is likely to come to a trickle and stop altogether with the existing media infrastructure in sports-concert complexes.

“JumbotroNazism,” my coinage, shows nothing but distasteful images of monstrous, corpulent whiteness, which will repel a physically normal world. No one will want to live in a country of hideous proportions and ungainly movements and behaviors.

Media conspirators will respond by showing hotness, a.k.a. other white women - not! America’s idea of attractiveness is overrated and bankrupt in the global bank of good taste.

K.E. Supriya
Shorewood

Such a wonderful window into the world of elitists who don’t like ordinary, especially working class Americans, who may be overweight and may do silly things when the TV cameras are turned on them at a sports event.

Consider, for example, the phrase “corpulent whiteness.” Ms. Supriya is apparently especially offended by overweight whites, but the reality of obesity is interesting.

In general, the prevalence of overweight and obesity is higher in women who are members of racial and ethnic minority populations than in non-Hispanic white women. Among men, Mexican Americans have a higher prevalence of overweight and obesity than non-Hispanic whites or non-Hispanic blacks. For non-Hispanic men, the prevalence of overweight and obesity among whites is slightly greater than among blacks.

But of course, phrases like “corpulent blackness” or “corpulent brownness” would be politically incorrect.

The real grudge people like Ms. Supriya have against working class Americans is simple: they are uppity. Rather than accepting the tutoring of their betters on how to live, they do things like driving trucks and SUVs, living in the suburbs, shopping at Wal-Mart and voting for Bush.

And they have the quaint notion that they have a right to live their own lives, regardless of what the Supriyas of the world think of it.

Even worse, they have one vote each, which is just as much as Ms. Supriya and her friends have. What a horrid injustice.

Of course, these JumbotroNazis make the United States an evil place, so everybody is going to stop wanting to come to America. But in the real world, vast numbers of people want to come here, oblivious to the elitist standards of “taste” of people like Ms. Supriya.

Now what do you suppose would be Ms. Supriya’s occupation?

A simple Google search shows her to be on the Communications faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee!

And given her name and appearance, she seems to be of Indian descent. But, unlike the vast majority of Indians who migrate to the U.S., she has been thoroughly socialized into academia. So she thinks like a college professor.

Shoebat Speech Video

Via Front Page Milwaukee and McBride’s Media Matters, two short video clips shot during the contentions and raucous question and answer session following the speech of Walid Shoebat at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Union earlier this week.

Muslim Student Association’s Case Against Shoebat

He was controversial when his speech was announced, and he remains controversial.

Walid Shoebat will speak at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee tonight.

And his talk will be followed by a panel sponsored by the Muslim Student Association attacking Shoebat and supporting Muslim belief.

We have advance copies of some of the material that will be used to attack Shoebat.

The handouts include:

• An article claiming that his biography made up, and questioning whether he really was a terrorist
• A list of talking points likewise questioning his background, and attributing extreme beliefs to him
• A statement from the Muslim Student Association at UC Davis that “called today on the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to investigate and deport Walid Shoebat, a self-confessed ‘ex-terrorist.’”
• A handout claiming that Shoebat has preached violence, rather than peace
• A statement from the UWM Muslim Student Association claiming that Shoebat is a “purveyor of hate, fear and violence.”

This latter statement has some bizarre elements.

For example:

We firmly believe in Shoebat’s right to promote his hateful views and his right to demonize Islam and Muslims. Neo-Nazi’s, the KKK and Shoebat all have the right to speak and we firmly uphold that right. However, we also believe that a venue other than a university would have been more appropriate for Shoebat to disseminate his bigotry and xenophobia. Shoebat has no academic credentials. He is a charlatan, a snake oil salesman and a fraud. Shoebat is a former “nobody” and is now an extremist Christian terrorist.

This sounds a bit bizarre in the face of the fact that the Muslim Student Association did try to get Shoebat’s speech cancelled.

Our experience in dealing with the Kennedy assassination might give us some insight on issues like this.

In the first place, people will come forward to tell “interesting” but quite false stories about their participation in important historical events. For the most part, these people are attention seekers.

On the other hand, when a witness gives testimony that certain people don’t like, it will get twisted out of context and all sorts of bogus claims will be made against the witness.

Either way, the Muslim students may have much more success discrediting Shoebat than they had trying to shut him up. In the very tolerant American culture, people automatically side with the person who is the object of a censorship attempt. But if it’s just speech (Shoebat’s) against speech (Muslim student’s) it’s an equal playing field.

There is a lesson here.

End of lecture.

Free Speech Wins at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Walid Shoebat is a reformed Palestinian terrorist who has been speaking out against jihad and anti-Semitism.

When the Conservative Union at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee invited him to campus, the Muslim Student Association tried to get the UWM administration to ban him.

Under pressure from the media, and especially Conservative talk radio, UWM administrators relented and agreed to let Shoebat speak.

It’s a clear victory for academic freedom.

So what’s been happening in the last 24 hours?

Sykes did a segment on it this morning.

Who is This Guy Shoebat?

Via Sykes Writes, a video clip.



Will Muslim Students Demonstrate Against Shoebat?

We yesterday reported that the Muslim Student Association would stage a demonstration against Shoebat. UWM was preparing for that, with space set aside both outside the Union and within the meeting hall for such demonstrations. (In the meeting hall, students would have been allowed to hold signs, but not to disrupt the discussion.)

A member of the organization told WTMJ that a demonstration was planned.

But it seems that the current plans of the MSA are not to demonstrate. An e-mail from Aamer Ahmed of the MSA says:

We will be holding a counter-forum immediately after the Shoebat lecture which will be entitled “Why I Chose Islam.” We are not planning to disrupt his speech as we recognize his right to freedom of speech. However, our main focus is on dialogue, diversity, and understanding and not conflict. We do however hope to educate the campus community on the background of Walid Shoebat prior to the event.

This, of course is an excellent plan. Indeed, the Muslim students have every right to stage a demonstration against any speaker they dislike.

That won’t make people forget that they preferred to shut the speaker up, however. Nor make people forget that they actually claimed that letting Shoebat speak would have threatened the physical safety of Muslim students.

Belling Weighs In

Our previous post had links to the Charlie Sykes and Jay Weber segments on the controversy. Yesterday afternoon, talker Mark Belling weighed in.

Belling went on one of his patented rants about how Muslims are bigots. We are a bit put off by such broad-brush rhetoric, although a lot of Muslims have a real problem where Israel is concerned, and a considerable minority will countenance terrorism.

Saying that Muslims are deplorably intolerant of Israel is no worse than saying that, circa 1955, Americans were deplorably intolerant of blacks. And, of course, there are politically correct leftists who today shriek that America is a “racist” nation.

But we still wish that Belling was a bit more restrained about what he says.

Is the UWM Policy Unconstitutional?

Blogger Rick Esenberg, a UWM alum, chimes in defending free speech, and makes a potentially critical point.

You never know how accurate a news report is, but it seems that the amount of the fee may have been set based upon the anticipated reaction to Shoebat’s views. As a general matter, this is unconstitutional. The government has the right to charge for the cost of policing an event, but, in general, it can’t set that fee based upon an assessment of the speaker’s views and the likely reaction to it.

The paper notes that other universities have banned or restricted Shoebat speeches, but they are private institutions. UWM is a public university and, while it may impose reasonable time, place and manner regulation, it does not get to engage in viewpoint discrimination. Basing the amount of a fee upon what a speaker will say and how others may react to it does that.

Whether anybody will bring this issue before a court, however, is questionable.

Want to Come?

Attendance will be somewhat limited -- apparently due to security concerns.

UWM students will be allowed in with a student ID.

Members of the community can attend, but they have to register to do so.

If you want to register, you can simply e-mail the Conservative Union and asked to be put on the list.

[Update]

It seems the talk will be open to the public without preregistration.

We just got the following e-mail from Josh Dirkse:

John- following a meeting today with the administration. We were able to negotiate regarding the access list for the event. The event with now be open to all [the] public, and will not require individuals to pre-register. I apologize for the rapid developments!

It seems the rapid developments are good ones.

You can see Shoebat Tuesday, December 4th, 7:30 PM in the UWM Union Wisconsin Room. The address is: 2200 E.Kenwood Blvd., Milwaukee, WI 53221.

When we hear from the Muslim Student Association about their counter event, we will post that information too.

Do Muslim Students Get to Shut Up Speakers They Don’t Like? The UWM Case

Via Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger, an interesting case at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

It seems that a reformed Palestinian terrorist has been slated by the Conservative Union to speak on campus, and the Muslim Student Association objects.

The university, it appears, is unwilling to flatly forbid the speech, but they are charging the Conservative Union about $2300 for the room. And $1,700 of this is for “security.” These figures have been confirmed for the Marquette Warrior by Laura Glawe at UWM Media Relations.

It is her understanding that the Conservative Union has produced a check for the necessary amount, and that the talk is “on.” It’s not officially “confirmed,” however. Glawe was unable to say what issues, if any, remain unresolved. Josh Dirkse, president of the Conservative Union confirms that the payment has been made, and says the event is “on,” but describes himself a “wary.” He says the confirmation process has been “quite a headache.”

Charlie Sykes has the relevant e-mails, showing the opposition of the Muslim students. One sent to Muslim students urges:

We have noted to the University that the event will create a safety concern for Muslims at UWM. We ask every Muslim who receives this to voice their concern and demand the cancellation of the event.

And an e-mail to the UWM administration claims:

The Muslims at UWM feel that their safety will be in danger if the above mentioned event takes place on the UWM campus. We ask the UWM Administration to cancel the event due to these circumstances for the safety and comfort of the students.

Yes, they actually raise the specter of non-Muslim students going out and beating up Muslims!

Opposition to free speech on the part of Muslims does far more to harm interfaith relations than any speaker condemning radical jihad.

And Jay Weber has more of the details.

Tight security is planned -- indeed the Conservative Union has paid for it! Not only will there be eight UWM police officers, there will be an additional 13 security guards.

There will be metal detectors.

Muslim students will have ample opportunity to protest, either outside the Union (where the speech will be held) or even inside the hall (where they will be allowed to hold up protest signs.)

Do the Media Matter?

When the Conservative Union found itself facing resistance from university bureaucrats, they “went public” with the issue. And indeed, the issue has been thoroughly hashed out today on conservative talk radio.

An official in the UWM Reservations and Event Planning office admitted to Dirkse that “the media coverage pushed us to believe that it’s a free speech issue.” It’s nice they came to believe that, but it would have been better had they believed it all along.

Is this Really Academic Freedom?

Glawe stressed that UWM has “done research” and established that it’s typical on other campuses to charge student organizations extra for security if they bring in a controversial speaker.

It should be obvious what’s wrong with this policy. It gives the groups or organizations who threaten violence or disruption the right to silence speakers, simply by imposing on sponsors costs that they, in a lot of circumstances, cannot bear.

Dirkse said the Conservative Union, to cover the cost of the event, had to take some money out of the honorarium that the speaker, Walid Shoebat, will receive. He said his organization is “a little behind on finances” and that “security costs really hurt us.”

Thus if conservative students will accept with civility the speech of a left wing radical, and leftist students will disrupt or shout down a conservative speaker, the leftists are rewarded with fewer conservative speakers.

The victims are being punished here.

It’s an incentive for being a fascist and a fanatic.

There are too many such incentives already on college campuses.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Now Will Report Race of At-Large Criminal Suspects

In a bit of ill-advised political correctness, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee failed to reveal, in e-mails send to students and staff, that at-large suspects in crimes near campus were black.

This created a bit of a stir when the student online journal Front Page Milwaukee blew the whistle on the UWM administration.

Well it seems the policy has now changed. Thus this last Friday, the following mass e-mail went out to the UWM community:

Armed robbery reported near UWM campus Thursday night

There was an armed robbery and home invasion at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, May 10, in the 2900 block of Farwell Avenue — about a block directly south of campus.

According to University Police, UWM students in the home said two men forcefully entered through the front door. The two men displayed firearms; threatened occupants; took wallets and electronics; and fled. University Police responded in support of the Milwaukee Police Department.

According to University Police reports, the two armed robbery suspects are described as follows:

Suspect No. 1, a black male, approximately 30 years old, stocky build, bald or very short hair, blue shirt with orange stripe with Nike swoosh on front, armed with a black semiautomatic handgun.

Suspect No. 2, a black male, also about 30 years old, medium build, loose cornrows hair style, wearing a green t-shirt with white writing and wearing over his hands white tube socks with stripes. He also was armed with a black semiautomatic handgun.

University Police encourage neighborhood residents to keep doors locked and windows secured.

If when off campus you notice suspicious activity or feel threatened, call Milwaukee Police at 911. Afterwards, please call University Police at 414-229-9911.

If when on campus you notice suspicious activity or feel threatened, call University Police at 9911 from a campus phone or at 414-229-9911 from a cell phone.

This message was sent by University Relations and Communications.

We suppose we understand the desire not to stereotype any particular group. But does that imply that one can’t simply tell the truth?

Further, how does one battle a stereotype (that blacks are disproportionally likely to commit crimes) when it’s true, when everybody knows it’s true and you look silly when you try to deny it?

This kind of stereotype can’t be mitigated by giving people “better information.” It is based on perfectly good information.

At Marquette

The Marquette Tribune does in fact publish the race of at-large suspects when such information is available. Consider, for example, this news brief that appeared on May 1.

The Milwaukee Police Department and Department of Public Safety are looking for a black man approximately 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 165 lbs.

According to DPS, the man has long black hair and was wearing a black knit cap, a black nylon jacket and dark pants when he robbed a 23-year-old male student Monday.

DPS officers said they urge students and faculty not to approach the suspect.

“If you see him, contact DPS immediately,” DPS Lt. Paul Mascari said.

We’d all prefer to live in a society where there is no connection between race and crime. Until that happens, the best policy is to bite the bullet and tell the truth.

Marquette Will Reveal Race of At-Large Suspect

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has recently come under fire for excessive political correctness in the e-mails it sends to students to warn them about security threats near the campus.

How so?

When the suspect in an assault or robbery is black, they refuse to report that fact in e-mails sent to students to warn them to be on the alert. This is the case even when the suspect is still at large.

We are proud to report this is not Marquette’s policy.

From an e-mail we just received:

7. Safety Alert

The Department of Public Safety reported an armed robbery in the 900 block of North 17th St. at about 3 a.m. Thursday. The victim, a Marquette student, was not harmed.

The victim was able to give a detailed description of both the suspect and the vehicle. The suspect was described as a black male, approximately 6 feet tall with a thin build, about 25 years of age with braided-style hair, sideburns and a thin beard. He was wearing a white jacket with logos on it. The vehicle was reportedly a white Jeep. The victim was unable to describe the driver of the vehicle.

If you notice a white Jeep with someone matching the suspect’s description, notify DPS immediately. Also be sure to exercise common safety precautions, such as using LIMOS or the student safety patrol when walking at night, walking in groups and being aware of your surroundings and of the location of blue light phones.

No doubt plenty of quite upright, law-abiding black folks are harmed when people steretype criminals as being disproportionately black.

Still . . . when you are warning people to be on the lookout for a particular individual, they deserve a decent description. So sometimes you have to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

Politically Correct Racism: UWM and “The View”

Both of these are via Jessica McBride’s blog.

In the first case, there were two cases of suspicious behavior near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. How did UWM administrators respond? They sent out an e-mail warning students about the situation. They described the suspect as follows:

The suspect in both of these cases was described as a white male, in his mid-20s, 5 feet 11 inches tall, 185 pounds, brown hair and blue eyes. He drives a blue Buick sedan with Wisconsin plates.

What’s odd about that? They included the suspect’s race.

Why is that odd? Because they routinely refuse to reveal the race of black suspects.

UWM student Kyle Duerstein, in Frontpage Milwaukee, asks:

What’s the moral of the situation? If UWM’s administration wants to be idiotically “politically correct” by excluding important identifying characteristics of black suspects, at least be consistent, and leave it out for white suspects as well. Better yet, why not just send out all information that you have available, regardless of whose feelings you might hurt?

Of course, given that the people who get the UWM e-mails (and anybody attentive to media outlets that are similarly politically correct) will simply begin to assume that if the race of a suspect is not given, the person is black.

And that would be a sound assumption.

The other case involves the fact that politically correct race hustlers can’t admit that the Duke Lacrosse players were the innocent victims.

First, there is Eugene Kane, Milwaukee’s own journalistic race monger.

Eugene Kane says the Duke lacrosse players bear responsibility for their own nightmare

That’s what he told an individual I know who talked to him about the case. He thinks because they hired a stripper, they somehow deserved what they got. That’s sort of a gender twist on the old “the victim deserved it” argument.

He also thinks the “white” cops and DA are mostly responsible. The accuser doesn’t even make his list.

Just is bad are the airheads on “The View,” who insisted that it was fair to prejudge the Duke athletes, since they are white, and “white boys” do things like that.

And if they didn’t actually rape that woman, they were probably guilty of doing something like that.

Upstart Student Media: Getting Recognition

Day before yesterday, we posted about how “upstart” student media in Milwaukee have been making some waves.

Yesterday morning, we got our regular e-mail from Milwaukee Magazine announcing Bruce Murphy’s current column.

Murphy’s lead story is about the fact that the crime rate at Southridge Mall is in fact lower than the crime rate at Mayfair -- which has been getting a lot of bad publicity in the wake of several incidents.

Murphy credits Front Page Milwaukee, one of the student outlets we blogged about, for breaking the story.

The idea for the story came from Jessica McBride, Faculty Advisor of the online newspaper. Matt Hrodey, the author, followed up and got the facts.

So we have a student journalist, writing an article for a brand new online-only outlet, which gets picked up by a mainstream (if local) glossy magazine.

Upstart Student Media: Kicking Some Butt

College journalism has long been dominated by rather staid, official publications, subsidized by universities and often under the control of journalism faculty or administrators.

But lately, two “upstart” student media outlets have been making some waves.

We are talking about, of course The Warrior (right here at Marquette) and Front Page Milwaukee (over at UWM).

The two publications are quite different. Indeed, about all they have in common is that they show what some journalistic enterprise, outside the confines of traditional outlets, can accomplish.

Front Page Milwaukee

One could argue that Front Page Milwaukee is actually a sort of “official” publication, since Journalism Department Lecturer Jessica McBride is the Faculty Supervisor, and appears to have quite a lot of say about what’s in the publication.

But McBride, a former Journal-Sentinel reporter, is also a conservative, has a radio talk show on WTMJ radio, and is critical of the mainstream media. Not, in other words, your typical journalism professor.

Many of the stories are written in McBride’s journalism classes, and others are independent submissions to her.

Front Page Milwaukee goes after “scoops” and exposés, and the very young publication has gotten an impressive number.

• The paper revealed a series of highly questionable expenditures by local school districts.
• It exposed the fact that numerous Milwaukee police officers have criminal records.
• It broke the story when a robbery near the campus resulted in an e-mail to all students. With the suspect at large, several details of his appearance were listed, but not the one that would have been most effective in helping identify him: his race.
• Along similar lines, when an entire crew of robbers accosted five people in the campus neighborhood, the Journal-Sentinel refused to list their race. Again, these were suspects still at large, whom citizens needed to be on the lookout for.
• At a time when reports of crime at the Mayfair Mall were occupying the local media, Front Page Milwaukee reported that Southridge Mall actually has a much higher crime rate.

Being in McBride’s journalism classes must be an exciting experience. Do a really good piece of investigative reporting, and your story will appear on the web, be talked about by Charlie Sykes and McBride herself, and echo across the blogosphere.

The Warrior

The Warrior is in may ways a lot more conventional than Front Page Milwaukee. It has a print edition, and a web site that essentially mirrors the print edition. It specializes not in “scoops” but in in-depth reporting of campus events, front-page feature stories of interesting people at Marquette, and political commentary. Of course there is the usual student newspaper coverage of food, entertainment and the arts -- as the undergraduate culture defines these things.

But it’s not just a clone of the official Marquette Tribune. Perhaps the most significant difference between it and the Tribune is the paucity of journalism majors on the staff.

Listing all the majors represented, we see Journalism/Political Science, English, Marketing / Operations Supply Chain, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Science, Broadcast & Electronic Communication, Advertising, Biomedical Sciences, Public Relations, Spanish Language & Literature, Pre-Law/History, Computer science/ Theology, Law School, International affairs, English literature, Civil engineering, Accounting, Finance, Studio Art.

A listing of majors supplied by Editor Diana Sroka shows a majority of the staff not to be journalism majors.

Just what sort of journalism can these dilettantes produce?

When the Milwaukee Press Club handed out their 2006 journalism awards, The Warrior won four in the Collegiate category -- twice as many as any other student paper in Wisconsin.

This doesn’t automatically make The Warrior better than the Marquette Tribune (which won two). Newspapers, like major league batters, have great years and not so great years.

(The Tribune won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, but The Warrior wasn’t eligible for any awards from either of these groups, in the former case because they haven’t paid the expensive membership fee, and in the latter because they are not the official school paper. But where they competed head-to-head, The Warrior won more awards.)

Further, The Warrior has a history of being ahead of the Tribune in certain ways. The Warrior started running feature stories, accompanied by large color photos on the front page, before the Tribune moved in the same direction.

At a minimum, the upstart paper is a challenge to the guild mentality of mainstream journalism. It seems you don’t have to be a journalism major, don’t have to identify with the mainstream media and don’t have to have liberal political opinions to produce good journalism.

Getting Competitive

Saying that The Warrior is a bit “conventional” isn’t to say that it lacks competitive drive.

On Monday, January 29, The Warrior rushed the web version of the paper online to “scoop” the Tribune (which was coming out the following day) on two stories: the rejection of Students for Academic Freedom by Office of Student Development bureaucrats, and the decision to perform “The Vagina Monologues” on campus.

Normally, the web version of The Warrior would have appeared online on Tuesday evening, before the paper hit the streets on Wednesday.

The following week, we talked to Tribune Editor Ryan Nilsson, and he disclaimed any concern with competitive pressures. He insisted that the Tribune staff “don’t play games of scoopsmanship or one-upsmanship” and that getting beaten on a story is “not something I worry about” and that his staff was “not checking the Warrior website every two minutes.” He was more concerned, he said, that there “weren’t any inaccuracies” in material run in the Tribune.

But other sources suggest that at least some Tribune staffers were more interested in what The Warrior was doing than Nilsson suggests.

On the Monday night in question, the Tribune was apparently checking The Warrior website regularly, since a Tribune staffer e-mailed comments to Diana Sroka by 1:45 a.m.

On a different issue, when The Warrior was the first campus paper to report the retirement of Athletic Director Bill Cords, one Tribune staffer told Sroka “they were all wondering” how The Warrior got the story so fast.

However the Tribune scooped The Warrior on the “Vagina Monologues” story -- getting confirmation from the Administration before The Warrior got their calls returned.

The advertising department at the Tribune apparently feels the competition too. They appear to routinely e-mail a solicitation to advertisers whose ads appear in The Warrior. Our colleague McGee Young got such an e-mail after placing a free notice about the Truman Scholarships competition in The Warrior.

Conclusion

In their hearts of hearts, people who are in -- and identify with -- the mainstream media like to inhabit a cozy monopoly. After all, they think they know what is important and what is not. They think they know how events should be interpreted. They are fully convinced they know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

Their Golden Age was during the 60s, 70s and early 80s, when a single newspaper dominated most markets. On TV, ABC, CBS and NBC presented a pretty uniform picture of what was happening in the world. There were no bloggers. Talk radio wasn’t much of a force.

But things have changed.

Mainstream media types have been distinctly grumpy about having their monopoly challenged. Their attitude toward conservative talk radio has ranged from contempt to downright detestation. They don’t much like independent bloggers (even while starting their own corporate blogs). They hate Fox News.

But they can’t have the old days back.

Given this fact, it’s part of a journalist’s college education to have to work in an environment where there are pesky competitors.

Or, with The Warrior or Front Page Milwaukee, to be the pesky competitors.

Journal-Sentinel Reports Race of White Suspect

Via Subject to Change, the fact that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (which has refused to report the race of black criminal suspects who are at large) is perfectly willing to report the race of white suspects. The paper reported:

The man entered Groppi’s Food Market, 1441 E. Russell Ave., about 7:10 p.m. and showed a silver and black handgun as he ordered everyone onto the floor, according to police. He approached the cashier and also grabbed a purse from a customer. No one was hurt.

Police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said witnesses described the man as a white male, six feet tall, 200 to 225 pounds and having a stocky build. They said he wore a black mask and sunglasses, and black jacket with a yellow or white stripe down the sleeves.

It might seem obviously sensible to report the race of a suspect still at large -- and quite likely a threat to other people.

But in at least one recent high-profile robbery in the UWM area, the Journal-Sentinel refused to identify the suspects as black.

And in another case in Racine, the Journal-Sentinel refused to give a racial description of a suspect who allegedly sexually assaulted a child in a school there.

The motive behind this kind of political correctness is clear enough: the media don’t want to reinforce the stereotype that blacks commit a disproportionate share of crime.

Unfortunately, blacks do commit a disproportionate share of crime (as well as being disproportionately the victims of crime).

People know that, and won’t forget that, even in the face of politically correct reporting.

Indeed, a cynical public is likely to simply assume that any criminal suspect whose race is not reported is black.

More Politically Correct Crime Reporting

The journalism students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are on a roll.

First there was the scoop on the issue of an e-mail that went out to all UWM students. A suspect was at large in a robbery, and students needed to be on the lookout.

But the e-mail omitted the race of the robber, while including other much less relevant information.

Now we have a similar case, this time involving political correctness on the part of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

When a crew of armed robbers held up five victims in the UWM area last week, the victims got a pretty good look at them.

The suspects were all black, they told police. And male. In fact, the victims provided a host of details, which police gave to the media.

But the state’s largest newspaper didn’t think the public had a right to know, even in the wake of criticism over the recent decision not to publish the race of a Racine sexual assault suspect while he was at large.

In the case of last week’s hold-up, readers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – and the university community – were asked to simply use their imaginations.

Said the newspaper about the March 1 robberies: No detailed description of the suspects was available, and the victims’ recollections of the suspects’ appearances varied.

University relations - which itself provoked controversy recently by deleting the race out of a suspect description in an email alert - sent the newspaper account on the March 1 robberies to students on Friday in another essentially useless exercise.

The newspaper’s account was not exactly true. A quick call to Milwaukee police revealed that there were some details the victims’ recollections did not vary on: Namely, the suspects’ race and gender.

The omission of the key information was not inadvertent.

[Reporter Tom] Held said the situation was discussed with an editor and the choice was made to omit the descriptions completely. That editor could not be reached for comment as he was out of the office. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Martin Kaiser, also could not be reached.

We can imagine instances where the race of a criminal would be moot. If he has already been taken into custody, and the crime isn’t racial in nature (not a “hate crime,” for example) the issue isn’t relevant.

But if the guilty parties are still at large, and if people need to be on the lookout for them, race most certainly is important.

Trying to conceal the fact that particular perps are black is an essentially useless exercise. Everybody knows that blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes. That knowledge isn’t erased if the politically correct language police refuse to mention it aloud.

A ban on discussing this issue honestly simply guarantees that it can’t be addressed effectively.

UWM Student Journalist Coup: University Censors Robber’s Description

It’s not news, unfortunately, to find political correctness at a contemporary university.

But it’s still surprising to find political correctness actually endangering public safety and impeding law enforcement.

Via Sykes writes, how a student journalist exposed the dereliction of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

First, from the police report, a description of a crime:

A UWM student was not injured during an armed robbery that took place on the west side of campus at 7:20 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 21.

The student was walking between the EMS and Physics buildings when he was approached from behind by a black male, with a dark complexion, 5’4” to 5’-6” tall, thin build, and in his mid-20s. The man displayed a black handgun and demanded the student’s wallet and cell phone. The student complied and the man ran to a parked maroon or red Mercury station wagon, which he then drove south on Cramer Street . The man was further described as wearing jeans and a brown-and-gold jacket with the word *Ecko* or “Epikos” written in yellow or gold graffiti lettering on the back.

But when the university sent an e-mail to all UWM students about the incident, the description was as follows:

A UWM student was not injured during an armed robbery that took place on the west side of campus at 7:20 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 21.

According to University Police reports, the student was walking between the EMS and Physics buildings when he was approached from behind by a man in his mid-20s. The man displayed a black handgun and demanded the student’s wallet and cell phone. The student complied and the man ran to a parked maroon or red Mercury station wagon, which he then drove south on Cramer Street. The man was further described as wearing jeans and a brown-and-gold jacket with the word *Ecko* written in a graffiti style on the back.

So the e-mail lists the color of the gun, the color of the station wagon and the color of the jacket. But not the color of the robber.

Tom Luljak, vice chancellor of University Relations, told me in an interview that he made the decision to omit the suspect’s race from the email to the student body.

“It is important that the university does nothing to contribute to racial profiling,” Luljak said. He added that there are thousands of black men in the city of Milwaukee and many of them are on campus.

Apparently, it’s not important to aid in the apprehension of the robber.

Let’s suppose that it would be better if whites didn’t believe that blacks are more likely than whites to commit crimes.

The problem is, blacks are more likely commit crimes, and people know it.

It’s hard to conceal the reality shown in the City of Milwaukee 2005 Public Safety Report, that murders in Milwaukee are concentrated on the north side, and the near south side.

Thus trying to protect black males from being “profiled” by concealing the race of a particular criminal is not only fruitless, it contributes to public cynicism. People will start assuming that the perp in a particular case must be black, since his race is not being reported.

Online Newspaper at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

We passed on posting about the first issue, but it now has to be noticed.

Front Page Milwaukee is an online project of journalism students at UWM, and the Faculty Supervisor is Jessica McBride, blogger and talk show host on WTMJ.

McBride explains:

I am the editor-in-chief of this paper, which is produced by students at UW-Milwaukee’s Journalism and Mass Communication Department. Many of the stories and columns are produced in classes. The paper launched today. The goal of the paper is to enrich the public debate by providing stories that aren’t being told elsewhere. The paper also will offer a rich mixture of opinion voices. You can find everything from liberal to conservative voices in this paper, and everything in between.

Our first response is “wait a minute, this isn’t a student paper!”

Our second thought is: “students do reporting for journalism classes, why shouldn’t their work appear on the web?”

We have served as a source for countless reporting assignments in Marquette journalism classes which never appeared in any public venue. Some of this probably resulted in “C” grades -- so nothing was lost. But some probably deserved a wider audience.

The UWM journalism students appear to have done some pretty decent muckraking in their first two issues, revealing quite questionable spending by local school districts, and the criminal records of Milwaukee city cops.

The web-only format is clearly the wave of the future, given that the circulation of print newspapers is steadily declining, while the readership of the web (including the web sites of traditional papers) is headed upward.

When Marquette students founded The Warrior, they chose to go with the now-traditional pattern of a print newspaper with an online version essentially identical to the print edition. This certainly has advantages. But web technology has radically reduced barriers to entry in journalistic enterprises.

Are there faculty or students at Marquette who should follow the lead of the public university across town?