Does the state of Wisconsin hate us?

[IAmMarquette]

Having attended a private high school in Northeast Wisconsin I can attest to the fact that anyone not affiliated with the school thought that the students there were rich, BMW-driving, drug-using, trust-fund-spending sh!ts. As the only private school in our conference (at the time...there has since been realignment with which I haven't kept up), all of the public schools HATED us. Even the nearby public schools in other conferences HATED us. And we reveled in it.

I grew up in Wisconsin. I have a lot of friends and family who attended UW or one of the satellites. I have no problem with the UW alums cheering for Bucky. I have no problem with a UW-M alum cheering for the Panthers, nor do I begrudge the UW-GB alum who roots for his Fighting Phoenix. The reaction I get from many of them (generally NOT the actual UW alums) when discussing Marquette is strikingly similar to what I experienced in high school.

Go ahead, UW (blank) alumnus, hate me because I went to a private university instead of your beloved UW (whose admission I declined, yet you were too dumb to get into). Hate me because my friends are lawyers, dentists, accountants and doctors. Hate me because my alma mater's basketball team has actually won something of merit in its history, and has contributed one of the sport's indelible personalities to its history. Hate me because that same program has a rich history of recruiting outside the upper Midwest kids who might not have had the most wholesome upbringing. Hate me because I don't bow to the altar of Bucky. But mostly hate me because you're ignorant. Peace.

/drops mic

[SoCalEagle]

Unholy liberals that are filled with jealously.  Of course the majority envies us.  Such envy takes on the appearance of hatred.  Simply pray for them.

JB, there are a lot of "holy" liberals at MU, too.  Something about that "social justice" thing that Jebbies are always talking about.  

[SoCalEagle]

SoCalEagle---I am very proud that I am part of a large family MU alums. Love the place and proud of it and appreciate the experience a great deal. My point on being stupid is that many public school believers think it is stupid to pay private school rates. My comment has nothing to do with IQ, rather how you spend money. I have heard 100 times why would you pay MU rates for your kid when UW is half the cost. A solid argument if you only look at cost. I believe MU brings plenty to the table that UW does not.

Sorry if my point was not stated correctly.

Goose, it sounds like you are a proud alum.  Now you just need to educate your buds on why they should be proud, too.

Go Marquette!!

[KenoshaWarrior]

This is the kind of garbage that I am talking about.  Does Madison have its problems like every city of its size?  Yes!  Is Milwaukee still one of the (if not the most) segregated cities in the US?  Yes.  Please don't pretend that UW students aren't involved in community service.  I live here, and I can tell you that is just insincere.

I am not saying Madison is the Utopia it purports to be, because it isn't.  But I will give Madison some credit for trying to take steps to reduce the problems that other cities just leave sit for decades.

Madison has done little if any step to curb the gang problem.  The cities hands are tied as they are still experimenting with what are called "hug a thug" programs which have not worked. 
M

[Sir Lawrence]

59% of MU students come from a state other than Wisconsin.
32% of UW students come from a state other than Wisconsin.  

Source:   http://www.marquette.edu/oira/documents/MU-CDS-1011-Final.pdf

The City of Madison still remains a largely "white" city.  My guess is that there are as many claiming Asian ethnicity as African American.

UW has roughly a 77% white student body, versus Marquette's 80%, but the big difference is again the Asian factor.  UW has 1,659 Asian students and 754 African American students (undergrad), while Marquette has 288 Asian and 380 African American.  

Source for UW information:  http://apa.wisc.edu/CDS_USNews/CDS_2011.pdf

[AZWarrior]

From liberal, tolerant, Madison you heard this?  SHOCKED I tell ya...SHOCKED

They ARE tolerant.  Just as long as you hold their views, that is.   

[warriorfred]

Grew up in semi-rural Wisconsin, went to MU, worked in Milwaukee, worked in Chicago.  To the average, small town Wisconsinite, Milwaukee is the edge of the earth (Chicago might as well be another planet).  Most cannot comprehend going to school in Milwaukee, much less a private school.  Any animosity for Marquette is based in ignorance. 

[Hards Alumni]

They ARE tolerant.  Just as long as you hold their views, that is.   

Can we please not turn this into one of 'those' threads?

[AZWarrior]

Can we please not turn this into one of 'those' threads?

Uh, sorry.  Didn't realize I was being inflamatory......

[[Mu]EngiNerd]

they don't like us because the cheese is getting to their heads... har har har

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

Grammatically, it would be impossible to consider Walker an alumnus -- but only, I'm sorry to say, because the singular forms are alumnus and alumna. The definition quoted above doesn't mean that we call a single male alumnus an alumni, just that a class of 15 women and one man is identified as alumni rather than alumnae.

My Latin is a little rusty.  My Avalanche Bar hat has a nice Latin saying on it, "Illegetimi non carobundum."  or something like that.  I think it means Xavier is evil and must be destroyed.

[oldwarrior81]

the city of Madison still lists 84% of the residents as white.
6% black, 6% asian and 4% hispanic.

not exactly a ethnic melting pot unless the suburbs are more diverse.

[steff_mckee]

Take it with a grain of salt.  Loved my time at Marquette and in Wisconsin, but c'mon "It's Wisconsin, it's Wisconsin." Never quite understood it though, the disregard for Marquette.  UW has a great campus, resources, etc., while Marquette, being a Catholic/Jesuit Institution doesn't have the financial resources of a UW.  Never have seen this kind of animosity toward a school in any other state.  Perhaps it comes from those Wisconsinites that never left the state and have a very parochial (limited) worldview. Who knows.......

[MUinSF]

     My Latin is a little rusty.  My Avalanche Bar hat has a nice Latin saying on it, "Illegetimi non carobundum."  or something like that.  I think it means Xavier is evil and must be destroyed.

I desperately wish I had that hat. A friend whose dad taught Latin told me it means 'Don't let the bastards get you down,' if my two-decades-old recollection is accurate-ish. Always loved that.

[RyanConroy]

I think it's mainly the football. There isn't enough animosity among students towards UW today. A ton of students were raised badger fans and they refuse to give up this allegiance when they choose to attend Marquette. It's a different era. There's even a sense among few that during the basketball season, if the badgers beat Marquette, all is not lost. In my estimation, if you really "love" college football so much, then you should have gone to UW, Iowa, or whichever school you're rooting for.

I outwardly dislike every other major institution's athletics programs, other than WVU and UNC, which are the schools in which my brothers' attend (even then, I don't pretend to be some diehard West Virginia football fan in the fall). It doesn't make sense to me any other way. What tie do I have to Illinois, for example (I grew up near Chicago)? I would understand these sentiments out of community college or smaller state school students that couldn't afford to go to the university they wanted, but to be a UW fan while attending Marquette? Inexcusable on every level.

[Earl Tatum]

I worked for the local newspaper and when MU won the NCAA Championship, I couldn't believe our sports editor put the full story on page 2 of sports. He got a lot of calls, because up here in Marshfield, there are many MU fans.

[Earl Tatum]

The same is for Loserville. Whatever they do, Kentucky is still No. 1 in that state. Loserville is second.

[IAmMarquette]

To my point about UW and its alumni being OK...

@UWMadison UW-Madison
Brilliant upset, @Marquetteu! Way to represent our great state of #Wisconsin. #pride #MUBB

http://twitter.com/#!/UWMadison

[Benny B]

My opinions for this sad 'tude do not reflect well on my home state:
- latent anti-Catholicism (I think there is more of that than you'd might expect)
- outright prejudice about (new code phrase) MU plays "urban ball" versus UW's Bo who plays white kids and wins...they just love that when you pin them down.
- view MU as a rich kids school (envy)

This is flatly ridiculous.  The Fox Valley is prodominantly Catholic... and I have never heard a negative WORD in Madison or Milwaukee that was anti-Catholic... and not being Catholic myself, you'd think I'd be privy to those types of conversations.

The UW people I know don't care that MU has black players, and that UW has white players.   They care that they win basketball games.  I think that Marquette fans (in general) make a bigger deal about UW being a bunch of 'stupid farm boy hicks' than UW fans do about MU having a bunch of 'ghetto stupid thugs'.  Its a crutch that we pull out and I am sick of it.

I can tell you, as a person who went to public school that I never envied a single private school kid.  Xavier HS was the local private (catholic!!) school, and we played them in all of our sports.  Many of them were our friends, and we teased them about their uniforms and many things... but we never envied them.  As the son of two educators I can tell you that anyone can attend Marquette, not just the rich kids.

Just hoping to provide a little balanced insight here rather than some of the ridiculous claptrap that is being posted above.

I think calling such a statement "flatly ridiculous" is a bit shortsighted considering there is at least a small element of truth to what he's saying.

I too have lived in Milwaukee, the Fox Valley, but also rural Wisconsin and Minnesota (as well as some time in Illinois and Indiana).  While not an anti-Catholic bias per se, there are pockets of "anti-Catholic education" bias mostly in rural areas of Wisconsin... surprisingly, even amongst Catholics.  I went to Catholic school in grades 4-8... I can't tell you how many snide remarks I got in high-school and CCD about having previously attended Catholic school.  There was an association of negativity with Catholic school children amongst their peers predominantly having to do with the perceptions that it was a "rich kids school" even though most of us were on tuition assistance (I don't remember exactly, but full tuition was something like $1100/yr and I didn't know anyone who actually paid the full amount).

While maybe it doesn't apply in Madison or Milwaukee, I can tell you that it does exist in other areas of Wisconsin.

[Hards Alumni]

This is flatly ridiculous.  The Fox Valley is prodominantly Catholic... and I have never heard a negative WORD in Madison or Milwaukee that was anti-Catholic... and not being Catholic myself, you'd think I'd be privy to those types of conversations.

The UW people I know don't care that MU has black players, and that UW has white players.   They care that they win basketball games.  I think that Marquette fans (in general) make a bigger deal about UW being a bunch of 'stupid farm boy hicks' than UW fans do about MU having a bunch of 'ghetto stupid thugs'.  Its a crutch that we pull out and I am sick of it.

I can tell you, as a person who went to public school that I never envied a single private school kid.  Xavier HS was the local private (catholic!!) school, and we played them in all of our sports.  Many of them were our friends, and we teased them about their uniforms and many things... but we never envied them.  As the son of two educators I can tell you that anyone can attend Marquette, not just the rich kids.

Just hoping to provide a little balanced insight here rather than some of the ridiculous claptrap that is being posted above.


I think calling such a statement "flatly ridiculous" is a bit shortsighted considering there is at least a small element of truth to what he's saying.

I too have lived in Milwaukee, the Fox Valley, but also rural Wisconsin and Minnesota (as well as some time in Illinois and Indiana).  While not an anti-Catholic bias per se, there are pockets of "anti-Catholic education" bias mostly in rural areas of Wisconsin... surprisingly, even amongst Catholics.  I went to Catholic school in grades 4-8... I can't tell you how many snide remarks I got in high-school and CCD about having previously attended Catholic school.  There was an association of negativity with Catholic school children amongst their peers predominantly having to do with the perceptions that it was a "rich kids school" even though most of us were on tuition assistance (I don't remember exactly, but full tuition was something like $1100/yr and I didn't know anyone who actually paid the full amount).

While maybe it doesn't apply in Madison or Milwaukee, I can tell you that it does exist in other areas of Wisconsin.

Perhaps, but it doesn't exist in Wisconsin more than anywhere else in the nation.  That is what I am talking about.  There are ignorant crabs everywhere, but to say that the people of Wisconsin don't like Marquette because of a Catholic bias?  Garbage.

[MUfan12]

Outside of a few, I've always had good conversations with people who were Madison alums. I think usually it's because we know that we're smarter than the rest of the people in the room.

The ones who drive me nuts are the UW-Bumfuck grads who are so over the top they feel like they have to always outwardly hate MU.

[GGGG]

Having grown up going to public schools in Wisconsin, I don't think people hate MU as much as they were puzzled over why I would choose to go there.  I mean, why spend that money when there are perfectly good public universities to attend for half the cost?  And they are good schools, I'm not going to dispute that, but MU was my place.

And I'm surprised to hear people think there is some sort of anti-Catholic angle to this.  I have never personally witnessed that.  Im not Catholic though.

[Eye]

The private school thing is the biggest part, and it carries over to the HS level as well. Most people in WI think anyone that goes to a private school must be a stuck-up rich kid.

Plus all the people from the UW-Hyphen schools associate themselves with the Badgers as well.  There's no Wisconsin State to balance things out.

EXTREMELY well stated on the private-school thing carrying over to the HS level. No doubt there are people in southwestern WI who are big-time jealous of La Crosse Aquinas' success in HS basketball, despite the fact I think the public schools actually have the bigger advantage in the surrounding small communities if they do things properly. Those small communities can gear everything they want to exactly the way they want it if they so choose, running the HS offense at the much lower levels, getting all the coaches they want at the much lower levels, emphasizing the things they want to emphasize with grade-school kids in camps, etc.

Also well stated on no competition for UW-Madison in WI. 41 states in the country have a D1 FB team, WI is one 7 states that has one and only one BCS conference FB team (NJ, Conn, WI, Mass, Minn, Mizz, Neb). As much as I'd love for WI to be a BB and BKB-centric state like it was 30 years ago, it's become a FB-centric state, so even those that aren't into college FB per se are going to gravitate towards WI-Madison.

[Eye]

UW went from being a "joke" of a school to national scene

I'll dispute that as well. Was in Arizona earlier this month, no discussion of WI sports other than the Packers a little bit. In KY in January, same thing. WI didn't come up when I was in Ohio and KC in November. Not many people outside of the border of this state believe WI is a player on the national scene.

[Hards Alumni]

You're an idiot if you really believe that.