Less than a week ago, at Whitewater’s Common Council session of 5.21.13, the city heard a presentation supposedly on university policies ‘to educate young adults’ about the dangers of substance abuse.
It was anything but that: after brief introductions from City Manager Clapper and Chancellor Richard Telfer, UW-Whitewater Police Chief Matt Kiederlen delivered scripted, doctrinaire, mostly punitive, and begrudging remarks on the university’s approach to drug policy. Chief Matt Kiederlen may hold whatever views he wishes, but it’s more than odd that anyone would watch these remarks and conclude that they would represent, as City Manager Clapper promised, something involving education.
Readers will find this portion of the meeting from 6:00 to 13:00 on the video below. (City Manager Clapper speaks from 6:00 to 7:09, Chancellor Telfer from 7:10 to 8:00, and Chief Matt Kiederlen from 8:00 to 13:00.)
Common Council Meeting 05/21/2013 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.
Chief Matt Kiederlen. Of the three gentlemen speaking, Chief Kiederlen remarks were the most to be expected; Whitewater will be one of the last places in America to abandon the Drug War. America will end that so-called war, and the huge expense for the sham gain it has provided, but a mostly punitive approach will linger here after the majority of our fellow citizens have turned away. (When that majority has turned away, it won’t be because of rejection from the left, but from the right, having grown tired of undelivered promises.)
For now, it’s an ‘education’ that’s a mostly coerced re-education under threat of greater punishment.
Instead of seeking a genuine transformation in someone’s thinking, we’ve a touted policy of overwhelming young people with possible sanction after sanction, with the assertion that all those possible punishments, both criminal and civil, a compulsory education class, and community service will somehow work a transformation in one’s thinking.
There’s a profound difference between permanently rejecting substance abuse as a matter of good health and temporarily renouncing substance abuse as a way to avoid harsher punishment.
If even the Soviets, with all the force of the state, couldn’t eradicate alcohol abuse by punitive means – and they couldn’t – then there’s nothing any punitive measure in small-town Whitewater will do to work a permanent and meaningful solution.
Chancellor Telfer. I’m not sure why the Chancellor bothered to speak at all, his remarks being both merely introductory and wholly inconsequential. His dean of students couldn’t attend, and his campus police chief did all the meaningful talking. Perhaps someone had the idea that Chancellor Telfer’s imprimatur gave Chief Matt Kiederlen’s remarks a certain boost, but then one would have to believe that the Telfer Administration had an imprimatur to offer.
It doesn’t; the big issues of town-gown relations haven’t been solved. Another chancellor will have to tackle the problems that Chancellor Telfer either can’t or won’t address. In the end, his administration will be mostly forgettable, having substituted a crony-capitalist building program for a genuine transformation in city-university relations.
(Money from then-Gov. Doyle or Gov. Walker is no substitute for a change in attitudes.)
The university’s influence in the city has been often wasted, as the administration’s courage extends no further than the first encounter with a complaining, unreconstructed resident.
Thousands of students enrich the city, but this administration’s advocacy of their interests dutifully stops when Whitewater’s stodgy town squires become upset.
City Manager Clapper. The most puzzling person in this is surely City Manager Clapper. Either his prior conversations duped him into misunderstanding what kind of presentation he’d receive at Council, or he can’t tell the difference between a punitive policy and a truly rehabilitative one.
Neither possibility is reassuring.
It’s not that one minds hearing how policymakers truly think. Better to see and hear official’s reactionary positions than have them hidden from public view. It’s advantageous to know.
Simultaneously, it’s disconcerting: these leaders within the city are, respectively, less reasonable, less effectual, and less insightful than Whitewater deserves.