Written by Marie Puissant
When it comes to campus diversity, for students, it’s more about how you define the term diversity. For those addressing differing personality and lifestyles, Madison is the leader of diversity. This is partly the result of campus-size. With over 45,000 students and hundreds of academic programs, people with every type of quirky element are drawn to UW. More so, many different organizations and clubs are set up to foster and nurture such contrasting people.
Racially, though, UW is less diverse. In the past two years, UW has gone up two percent in terms of diversity, as approximately 12.5 percent of students fall into minority categories, up from 10 percent in 2006. There is a growing trend of more international and study abroad students as well. Some students still find this statistic unfortunately low, however, and link it to the university’s Midwest location. But though UW's minority student population may be small, it is very strong in terms of presence. Many of the diversity clubs at the university are the ones offering the most activities and opportunities to students. These clubs will often hold information fairs, social gatherings, debate forums, and educational seminars. One downside is that students don’t feel minority groups spend much time on recruitment.