Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:19 and sunset is 8:26 for 15 hours 7 minutes of daylight. The moon is full today.
On this day in 1916, at the Battle of Jutland the British Grand Fleet engages the German High Seas Fleet in the largest naval battle of the war, which proves indecisive.
When a city has its own university campus, and that university wishes to acknowledge its academically successful students, it’s conventional and natural that the university would publish a dean’s list of those students in each semester. Many of those on that meritorious list are — now, today, this moment — residents of Whitewater.
How regrettable that an old and tired outlook would sift and sort among these students to deprecate their current, genuine residency, as one sees from another publication’s editor’s note appended to UW-Whitewater’s recent dean’s list:
Editor’s note: It is evident that the majority of the students listed here have not been long-term Whitewater residents (but some of them will undoubtedly stay here post-graduation). The university includes all students who have registered with a local address.
Well. This perspective — that these students are not long-term residents — is so very typical of Old Whitewater’s sifting and sorting of students (and others) into lesser categories. It’s what’s led to a same-ten-person problem, where boards, commissions, and organizations are unable to find new members, and old members are left complaining that no one will help them:
Younger members in these community groups come to realize that they’re not valued new members but instead disposable indentured servants. Since indentured servitude is seldom a personal aspiration, these newcomers quit the group. This leaves the group with indolent older members on the hunt for still more new recruits to
dupepersuade into membership.
These students are residents, here and now, and that’s the relevant and material classification that matters. That’s why The Next Generation Should Start in 3, 2, 1…:
For successful community groups, the goal should be a few aged members advising and mentoring many more younger members who are given prominence and genuine responsibility. For unsuccessful community groups, it’s the opposite: many aged members hogging prominence and responsibility while relegating new, younger members to scrubbing and scraping.
‘That’s how we’ve always done it’ is the implicit motto of many a failing group.
For anyone wondering how this libertarian blogger feels about Old Whitewater’s outlook, I’d say it’s sadly and darkly comic. It’s as though one could have listened to the last few Raphus cucullatus insisting that, you know, they were the real birds and other species just hadn’t been around long enough.
Successful communities build their foundation, and present to the community, with more than a tired combination of fussiness and stuffiness. The Whitewater community’s strongest foundation, and its most compelling presentation, will come from welcoming and inclusive opportunities for residents as true equals.
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.
Sharp-looking bat-eared fox kits make first public appearance: