It’s no secret that some on the UW-Madison campus believe the athletic department operates more like an autonomous empire than a subset of the university.
That friction got a public airing May 5 when Walter Dickey, associate dean of the UW Law School and chairman of the Athletic Board, which is charged with oversight of the athletic department, was challenged on the maverick ways of the athletic department while delivering his annual report to the Faculty Senate.
As Barry Orton, a professor of telecommunications and a Faculty Senate member, sees it, “The question is who is in charge? Is it the tail (athletic department) or the dog (university as a whole). When it’s important and it involves money, it’s the tail. And that’s the concern of the faculty — that the dog should be in control of the tail, rather than the other way around.”