Reorientation

Episode 7: It’s a Reorientation first! We just couldn’t fit everything into six episodes, so this season we’re going one more and bringing you up to speed with some of UW–Madison’s most recent protests. How has UW organizing changed in fifty years? Or has it at all? What are students worried about today? And does it have anything to do with the generations of students who’ve come before them?

Episode 6: The call is coming from inside the house! A call for meaningful change, that is. What does it look like when the goal of a protest is for students to hold their own university accountable? Whether it’s confronting a culture of racism or fighting for LGBT rights, it turns out the protests themselves seem pretty familiar. 

Episode 5: You know the stereotype: college students don’t live in the real world. All they care about is themselves and what’s happening on campus. When they protest, it’s always about stuff that affects them. Well, if that were true, we’d have absolutely nothing to tell you in this episode about, say, students organizing against US military intervention in the Middle East, or successfully pushing the university and local government agencies to divest from Apartheid South Africa. Go figure. 

Episode 4: Teach-ins. Marches. Occupying buildings. Tear gas. Clashes with cops. A firebombing or two. Turns out things tend to escalate when you’re trying to stop an unjust war… a war that you yourself could get drafted to fight in. The anti-Vietnam War protest movement at UW-Madison in the 1960s and 70s was nothing short of explosive! (That’s foreshadowing, by the way.)

Episode 3: Winter 1969. Black students at UW lead a weekslong strike that grinds the university to a halt. Their demands aim to make the overwhelmingly white institution more welcoming and accountable to minority students. Today the strike is remembered as one of the most noteworthy and successful protests in UW history. But there’s much more to the story than just a few weeks of civil disobedience.

Episode 2: We all have to start somewhere, even when it comes to learning how to protest. Maybe begin with something small like fighting with school administrators over a plaque. Then move on to something a little bigger like labor organizing in the dining halls. Before you know it you’ll be staging a decades-long fight against housing discrimination!

Episode 1: The Vietnam War! Civil Rights! Responsible traffic patterns on shared roadways! Whatever the cause, UW students have never been afraid to make their voices heard with a little bit of civil disobedience. But where did our reputation as a protest school come from? And why is protesting such a quintessential college thing to do? Maybe some Boomers have the answer.

Episode 6: Okay, enough history. We’ve pretty well covered that finding a place to live in Madison has been hard for a loooong time. But what are the specific challenges in 2025? At a time when college is theoretically more accessible than ever, why is housing still such a problem and, in some ways, a bigger problem than ever? And since it’s an issue that directly affects universities’ students (and faculty and staff) should universities be doing more to fix it?

Episode 5: In 2016, Glamour Magazine published a profile on Brooke Evans, a UW-Madison student who was working on her degree while homeless and living in her car. But as remarkable as Evans’ story was, it’s not unique. Students at UW and campuses across the country are facing homelessness and struggling to meet basic needs, whether or not administrators and policymakers acknowledge it. 

Episode 4: So far we’ve talked a lot about dorms and the rental market. But there are other places where college students live. You just might not necessarily think of them as housing. Fraternities and sororities house thousands of UW students, but they come with high costs and exclusion. Housing cooperatives offer cheap rent and community but they’re not for everyone. Are there lessons to be learned from alternative housing that could help solve the bigger problem?