My son, my mother, my husband and I trekked to Center Cinema in Richland Center last night to watch Ken Brosky’s film Closure. On Facebook, one of my friends commented “I would think this film would be so unbearably sad.” But it’s not. It’s very much bearably sad, and there are some bright spots and funny moments, such as when a UW-Washington County student told a UW-LaCrosse professor who expressed ignorance of the Wisconsin Idea, “Why don’t you fucking Google it,” and when Ken played guitar while waiting for Board of Regents folks to return his calls (spoiler alert: they didn’t return his calls). I also found it therapeutic to boo Ray Cross and Scott Walker. I was wishing we’d set up some sort of interactions, a la Rocky Horror Picture Show, because I very much wanted to throw something when Jay Rothman appeared onscreen (was apparently out of boos by that point).
Obviously those of us directly affected by the closings of various UW Colleges campus (Richland, Washington, Marinette, Fond du Lac, Fox Valley, Waukesha, and counting) find the subject matter compelling. But everyone in Wisconsin has a stake in the education of current and future students, and since Wisconsin ONCE had the reputation of supporting a high-performing university SYSTEM, and had a reputation as a state that cared about education, and now is such a dramatic mess–everyone who cares about education in the United States could find something of interest.
And Ken did a really nice job. He worked fast with a low budget, and it’s his first film, but to his credit he conducted a ton of personal interviews and edited them well, and included so many archival campus photos (and more recent photos, like the one of me & my son above). The film has a clear thesis: these closures weren’t necessary (given the budget surplus–in BILLIONS–that Wisconsin currently has available), were a self-fulfilling prophecy (“your enrollment is low so we’re going to cut your budget and eliminate course offerings and restrict recruiting…hey, wow, your enrollment is really low so now we have to close you”), and that drastic budget cuts brought about by Wisconsin Repugnant-cans are to blame. One really effective moment showed how many lawyers, financiers, and business people were on the Board of Regents when lots of bad decisions were being made–how they had no previous education experience, how much money they donated to Republican candidates. He did also, accurately, and fairly, point out that one recent bad decision (voting to eliminate the positions of/lay off/fire 30+ tenured faculty at UW-Washington County and UW-Waukesha) was made by a Board of Regents that consists largely of appointees by Democratic Governor Tony Evers.
My good friend and former colleague Ellyn Lem writes well about that firing of tenured faculty in an article today in Inside Higher Ed. One poignant quote among many: “What is saddest for me about losing my tenured job is that I used that ‘commitment’ from the UW system to be committed back.” That was certainly true of Ellyn, and I saw my work the same way, as did sooooooo many other faculty members. I’m very luckily and happily retired now, but it’s just luck that I was on a campus where losing my job wasn’t in play.
I should disclose I’m biased about the quality of the personal interviews in Closure, since I was one of them, and I show up a lot early in the movie. (Fair warning if you’re used to my looking snazzy–I look pretty ratty, like someone who’d been moving boxes and had maybe been through a hard time for several years, both of which were just true. Good thing I’m not vain.) It was nice to be able to talk about the campus, about trying to scramble to do something, anything to help keep it going and open, and what it was like to be a parent on campus. Ken, novelist that he is, picked up a nice narrative, that my son grew up on campus, felt comfortable there, took 10-credits of biology on campus, would have taken more except the campus closed, and is currently working retail and working on a novel (about which he would only say is “post-apocalyptic.”)
There are several reasons I wanted to blog about Closure. I wanted to recommend Ellyn’s column, I wanted to vent a little/grieve a little, and I wanted to recommend the movie. You can see it in person in Oshkosh, but there is the opportunity this weekend to watch it online. Click here to get tickets to watch it between October 4-5.
It is a very sad story, but I promise it’s not unbearably sad. Regardless, I think it’s really important to bear witness to the work so many of us did for so many students for so many years.
P.S. if you agree with me that a HUGE part of the problem here is the Wisconsin legislature, dominated by Republicans because of unfair gerrymandering, you should consider donating to Wisconsin Dems. It’s a link connected to my fundraising–I’ve pledged to raise at least $210.
marniere 