The Branding Iron Staff
After a long debate on the three candidates proposed by the Board of Trustees, the Branding Iron staff has decided to endorse presidential candidate Gregory Bowman for the UW president.
There were some concerns over whether or not Bowman would be able to handle something as complicated as UW president with only a law school background; however we ultimately decided he was the best candidate for the job.
While all of the candidates had relevant and useful ideas for the university, Bowman’s offered both economic gain to the university and his genuine care for his prospective student body.
“They’re not just students, they’re people and they have lives and so we need to help them and not just focus on classes,” Bowman said in an interview with Wyoming News Now.
In addition to his comments about students as people, his views that diversity is integral to a university campus and his belief in “smart campus growth” lends to his alleged care for the student body, faculty and staff of the university. His belief that the university should find a way to retain its current students and increase the graduation rate lends to the idea that he cares more about the current student population than the prospective student population. Considering the attitude of the administration about bettering the university in the future, rather than the present, this is refreshing.
We also appreciate his verbal commitments to transparency as stated in one of his Q&A’s with the UW students.
“When you ask me a question and I have the answer, I’ll tell you. When I don’t, I’ll tell you that I don’t know. And if there are things I can’t say, I’ll say I can’t talk about that…I think it’s important that when there are issues that make emotions run high, that we are thoughtful, deliberative, [and] as transparent as possible,” said Bowman.
Finally, the staff at the Branding Iron agrees with his idea for the “conversation tour”, as an attempt to return trust to the administration after so long. That being said, we have got our eyes on the Board of Trustees to see what their final decision is.
We’re watching you Wazowski.
Always watching.
