Many small towns, looking for something to attract visitors and newcomers, probably dream about the possibility of a college campus. Whitewater has a public university campus, and the majority of the city’s residents are students at that school. Thousands of students in the city assure a steady stream of retail traffic we would not otherwise have. Some, if not most, merchants in town would wither or shut down without the demand the campus generates.
A thriving campus is an advantage for a city.
There is a way, however, that a campus – with the demand that it alone can generate – masks failings elsewhere in town. Because a campus necessarily draws visitors large numbers, failings of local municipal and other public officials are more easily ignored or overcome. Non-university officials don’t need to work as hard or as skillfully in an environment where a university’s demand compensates (as it by volume necessarily will) for their own mistakes and sloppiness.
Consider a recent story about policing in nearby Clinton, Wisconsin, where some residents are upset that local law enforcement’s supposedly heavy-handed conduct is driving away potential visitors who would otherwise shop in that town. (A story on this matter, behind a paywall, is poorly written and almost deliberately vague, offering little beyond a general claim.)
Whatever’s happening – or not – with local officials in Clinton, Wisconsin, this much is true: like most tiny towns, they’re on their own, with no campus to compensate for local political and administrative failings.
A municipal mistake in a place Clinton echos like a single pea in a tin can – there’s nothing else to muffle the rattling.
Whitewater, Wisconsin’s public campus gives local officials (here I mean some, not all) more leeway for error, shoddy thinking, and low-quality work, secure as they are in the knowledge that demand will remain higher than if their work alone were the city’s principal attraction.
This is one reason that, despite the talent of some, Whitewater’s Major Public Institutions Produce a Net Loss (And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way). It’s also true that the university, itself, has generated demand even when its some of its leaders – Richard Telfer easily comes to mind – have been mediocre or worse (“There is one exception worth noting: the high-level leadership that former Chancellor Telfer gathered at UW-Whitewater is notably weak or troubled…”).
Whitewater has an advantage that towns like Clinton don’t have, but rather than use that advantage to its fullest – by producing to a higher level – some officials can batten on the demand that a public campus offers without having to provide the unassisted effort that most rural communities must.