Dr. Gee Co-Chairs UW-Madison report addressing the long-standing challenges faced by Black students, faculty, and staff on campus.

[Excerpts from UW Article and Report] Last year, after a video of a student making racist comments surfaced online, Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin tasked a campus ad hoc group with studying the Black experience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and recommending steps the campus community could take to positively influence that experience. The ad hoc group co-chaired by Rev. Dr. Alex Gee and Professor Angela Byars-Winston has now completed its work. 

The group’s wide-ranging recommendations, contained in its final report,include enhanced recruiting and retention strategies, the formation of advisory councils, more outreach to Black alumni, and increased support for the Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History.  Besides recommendations encompassing immediate actions that can be implemented unilaterally, Dr. Gee advised on Justified Anger’s approach of ambitious systemic change in order to have a lasting effect, even though it requires extensive time and resources to achieve.

Despite numerous initiatives and decades of advocacy, progress in enhancing Black representation and experience at the university has remained insufficient, with Black community presence consistently around 3%. Traditionally, the university’s responses to racial issues have been reactive, emerging only in the wake of significant racial tensions or incidents. The Chancellor encouraged the committee to prioritize actionable items that range from the readily achievable to more complex initiatives that address the root causes of the issues at hand, thereby paving the way for substantive and sustainable change. Read the report for more specific recommendations and actionable items.

This article contributed by Eli Steenlage with excerpts from UW-Madison Article and Report.