Come clean Governor Walker and Marquette University, and tell
us why Walker left college under dodgy circumstances
Personal Essay by Dr. Glen Barry
May 22, 2012
The year was 1988 – current Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
is running for Marquette University student body President. Hoping to shake off
the embarrassing loss to a write-in candidate for resident hall President the
year before, Walker is pulling out all the charm and hardnosed political
tactics at his disposal. Things are going well until the student newspaper retracts
its endorsement, calling candidate Walker “unfit for office”, but I am getting
ahead of myself.
For the 99% of you reading this essay – who are not from
Wisconsin – Scott Walker is the latest tea party right wing, uneducated,
superstitious nut job bent upon destroying America with a virulent form of
conservatism bordering upon fascism. In early 2011, after only days in office, and
without running on the issue, Walker threatened to call out the state national
guard to ram through reforms to gut public unions. Over coming months, Wisconsin
citizens fought back – coming out by the hundreds of thousands in a “Cheddar
Rebellion” to protest and occupy the state capitol. Thus began a year of Walker’s war upon the unions, environment,
women, education and basic human decency.
I had the misfortune of being a college classmate of Scott
Walker. Walker attended Marquette from 1986 to 1990, two years younger than I.
He was a laughable dork – dumb, full of himself, and authoritarian. Being
deeply imperfect myself, nonetheless, I have to speak up on how going to
college with Walker showed him to be a piece of work. And that his bad conduct,
which began there, and led to a harsh and unjust start to his political life, which
remains ugly and dangerous to this day, do in fact indicate Walker remains
unfit for office.
Fresh from Badger Boys State leadership conference, freshly
shorn of his mullet, and in ill-fitting suits; Scott rolled onto campus in 1986
at 18 already running for office. He was constantly speaking in sound bites,
with a false sugary sweetness, about taxes and abortion – the only issues which
Scott Walker truly cared about other than his personal quest for power.
To put it politely, Walker was not the sharpest tool in the
shed, actually amongst the least sharp. With a C average (if that) and never
graduating, I am not surprised to see him making up his own math on jobs when
the real numbers don’t suit him. This reflects the utter disdain with which he
holds truth, knowledge, education, and anything else that clashes with his absolutist
worldview of religious and corporate based rule. As a classmate, he displayed a
shocking lack of curiosity, original thought, or interest in topics other than
his political ascendency.
Walker’s debut in Marquette student politics as a freshman began
by stirring up the campus with a McCarthyite investigation into misspending by
the Homecoming committee. Despite the President and Vice-President of student
government having already resigned over personal expenditures by a larger group
of student leaders from student funds (including myself and others unknowingly), no criminal charges of any kind, and no hard evidence of wrong-doing by anyone
– Walker grandstands and leads a student government trial of myself and others,
that could have been avoided if he so chose.
Walker lost on all counts, but not before destroying a few
people’s reputations, and amassing personal power. Sound familiar? Thus began
an over 25 year record of bullying to get what he wants, of being insincere and
narcissistic, and political grandstanding at the expense of others¸ all for
personal self-aggrandizement, and without an ounce of either personal or political
virtue.
Later in his freshman year Walker runs for his first campus-wide
office – the President of the resident halls – and is beaten by a hastily
cobbled together write-in campaign which I helped organize. Already the campus
had soured upon a plastic, dishonest, conniving personality.
During Walker’s student body Presidential campaign in his
sophomore year, things only worsen. Initially the Marquette Tribune student
newspaper endorsed Walker’s opponent – a progressive activist working on social
justice issues in the community – but said both would make a good student body president.
But this tepid endorsement changed after Walker was
sanctioned for illegal campaigning on numerous occasions, and brutal personal
attacks upon his opponent’s character, mocking his commitment to help the poor. In an unprecedented
move, just days before the election, the newspaper retracted itself and declared Walker "unfit for
office". In response, Walker’s campaign began secretly and systematically throwing
out copies of the newspaper that endorsed his opponent. He lost in a land slide and was deeply humiliated by his poor conduct.
Thus began an early pattern of ridiculing those concerned
with social justice, homelessness, militarism, and racism. Forget about it, in
his corporatist and religious world, such issues are not of concern. To care
for others’ needs is unlikely to further his political power grab. Reducing
taxes and ruling women’s bodies is all he cared about then, and all he seems to
care passionately about now.
Scott Walker shamed himself by the way he acted at
Marquette. His campaign was one of the dirtiest in school history. Walker left
the university not long afterward. The fact that Walker has refused to release his
transcripts, along with information why he left, raises reasonable questions if
Walker left school on his own volition, as he claims, or if there was another
reason and he was kicked out.
I wish I could say definitely why he never graduated – it is
a closely guarded secret. I believe the general line of thinking – that Scott
Walker was caught cheating. Both Walker and Marquette University should end
their cover-up of what occurred. Instead Marquette hails Walkers as a
“Marquette alumnus” even though he only attended and did not graduate.
I should note that in his junior year, after being pummeled
in student politics, Walker seemed a reformed and humbled man, and tried to
make amends. For a while he was just himself, and not always conniving to get
something with false plastic, creepy insincerity. Indeed, I have fond memories
of drinking beers with a more humane Walker, as friendly adversaries. Yet
clearly he went back over to the dark side after leaving Marquette, returning
to his scorched Earth, divide-and-conquer mentality that got him in so much
trouble there, and to this day.
Scott Walker is still unfit for office. During his time as
Milwaukee County executive, massive illegal fund-raising went on feet from his office
door. In the past year and a half, Governor Walker preemptively threatened not
only eerily to call out the National Guard, he threatened to illegally arrest
political opponents. He refers to hard working nurses, fire-fighters, cops, teachers,
and government workers as union thugs. For months he illegally limited access
to the Capitol – the people’s house. Corporate interests were given the keys to
the state, and told to go forth and plunder.
And now Governor Walker has sold out the state to the national
tea party movement for a 25 to 1 advantage in money for his recall campaign –
and is saturating the airwaves with lies, trying to buy the election.
In closing, let me note it is really sad to see a politician
taking advantage of the jealousy between those that did not work hard in
school, did not get an education, and thus have smaller opportunities; and
those that worked hard to build their minds, and now work in professional, yet
underpaid public service jobs. His campaign preys upon class jealousy, ignorance
and racism in rural areas, kowtowing to the lowest denominator of decency in
the populace.
I know a petty tyrant when I see one. Scott Walker is concerned
with one thing, power. He has shown time and again that he has a very limited
view of the world, and will ram through policies not because they work or he
believes in them, but because he is an aspiring tinpot dictator.
Walker seeks to consolidate his power with every move he
makes. Everything comes down to a cruel calculus of whether it benefits him
personally and politically, with no concern regarding the line of victims behind
him, or concern with such “socialist” virtues as human rights, economic
justice, equity, and sustaining ecology.
Walker’s glib narcissism borders upon sociopathy. If this is
the best the right wing nut jobs have we are in profound trouble as ecosystems,
rights, justice, and equity are all rolled back in the interest of low paying
jobs and corporate rule. In fact, Walker’s conduct meets all the definitions of
a classic fascist – authoritarian, gutting unions and education, scapegoating, threatening
violence, vilifying critics, being charming yet falsely charismatic, and commitment
to corporatist rule.
Scott Walker is a bad and dangerous man. There is something
fundamentally wrong with Walker’s personality that makes him unfit for office –
both then and now. That’s my and many others’ conclusion after seeing how
abusive and ill-tempered he was then, and how bad of political bully he has
become.
Let me be clear - I have not a shred of jealousy regarding
my former classmate. I would never want to rule over women’s bodies, dismantle
Wisconsin’s prized educational system, sell-out the state with massive tax
breaks to out-of-state corporations, or wage war upon tribal rice lands and
working families. And I recognize unions – the right to associate with others
to organize to sell your labor to the highest bidder – to be a fundamental
human right.
I am not fit to be governor, and abhor local politics,
focusing instead upon issues of global ecological sustainability. And I was no
angel in college, partying too much and a caddish oaf towards women, despite
graduating with honors. But I am not running for governor, nor misrepresenting
myself like Walker, and certainly not untruthfully taking away others’ rights,
while again trying to steal an election, in order to cravenly pursue absolute
power.
I don’t know who will win the recall, but I do know that if
you are expecting things to settle down if Walker wins, you are going to be
disappointed. For his whole life Walker has created crises to then divide and
conquer opposition in order to consolidate his power.
Though Governor Walker never attained the Marquette student
body presidency – he has an awful lot in common with one of Wisconsin’s other
infamous politicians who did – Senator Joe McCarthy. Have you no sense of
decency, Scottie, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
Listening to the US Presidential election, you wouldn't know Earth
faces ecological emergencies including abrupt climate change and
ecosystem collapse in water, forests, and food. The United States and
world are less free, green and peaceful places – largely because human
growth has met ecological limits. Ongoing rollbacks of human rights and
civil liberties, as well as the state of perma-war waged by drones
terrorizing entire populations, is a direct result of environmental
decline caused by industrial growth and the resulting scramble for oil
and other resources in a globalized world.
