Demand Father Wild to Live Up to His Threat

Students and alumni alike, of no fault of their own mind you, are quick to condemn the Board of Trustees at Marquette University for the ‘Gold’ debacle, but this only goes about in diverting attention from the true source of the controversy. While I will acknowledge that the Board of Trustees deserves to be blamed partially for all of this, whether it is for one particular reason or another which will be discussed in greater detail shortly, but I believe personally that it is Father Robert Wild who bares the most responsibility for this public-relations disaster. Reports have come out recently which have indicated that Robert Wild threatened the Board of Trustees that he would resign as President of Marquette University if they did not go forward with the ‘Gold’ decision. While confirmation on this event has yet to be validated, this surely begs the question as to whether Marquette University would have been better off had Robert Wild resigned as he threatened. The amount of good he has done can never equate to the humiliation and frustration the nickname issue has caused for the university.

On the part of Father Robert Wild and the Board of Trustees at Marquette University, the Warrior debate has resulted in one public-relations disaster after another. All that needed to be done in order to squash the issue was to have refused to bring up the discussion of reinstating the Warrior nickname when that alumni speaker offered the two million dollars to bring back the Warrior to the college campus. It was that damn simple! But no, we had to say that we would consider the decision in the future. This led to a forum and a survey being set up. Pushing the meeting back time and again to the point where the announcement has caused ten times the amount of criticism and backlash then was ever expected when the issue first came about. This is why I am calling on Father Robert Wild to live up to his threat and resign as President of Marquette University.

There are those individuals who would wish to defend Father Wild from such attacks arguing that he has done so much for this university in the past few years. And while I will agree that that is true to an extent, his assumed legacy as the university’s president, which I will begin questioning as of now, does not make up for the arrogance he has shown in the face of overwhelming opposition and not limited to within the university itself. Wild has not only succeeded in establishing this academic institution as a mockery in the eyes of the state but from the perspective of the nation as well as we make the transition from the Conference USA to the Big East. He has overwhelmingly exceeded the duties assigned to him as President of Marquette University in defense of a decision which has embarrassed essentially the entire student body and angered the alumni base which has been the backbone of this university, and what has separated us dramatically from UW-Milwaukee.

The pinnacle piece of evidence in the case against Robert Wild is the Board of Trustees supposedly unanimous decision to approve the new ‘Gold’ nickname for the university. How could the Board of Trustees at Marquette University vote in favor of this glaringly obvious mistake thirty-eight to nothing? Would someone from the university’s math department calculate the probability of this occurring? Zilch if I had to guess. There can be only two explanations for this – either the Board of Trustees has become a basic rubberstamp for Father Wild and the Jesuit agenda, the more liberal of the Catholic orders, or else the Board of Trustees are entirely incompetent to the needs and the opinions of the student body of Marquette University.

If the former then the question has to be raised as to how long this has been occurring. Even at the level of academic institutions such at Marquette University, Board of Trustees do not become rubber stamps for an administration over night. If the latter there is still no excuse for at least one trustee from not taking a stand and arguing against the decision because he/she believed it to be a bad idea.