What does our advertising say about our values and identity? Take for instance, the ads that Marquette University runs every televised basketball game. One 30 second ad I saw, ‘Be the Difference,” features a professor and different students talking individually about Marquette and how it’s a nice place, interspersed with Images of campus. One such image is University President Robert Wild S.J. high-fiving students at a basketball game.

The television ad for fellow Big East school Seton Hall University, broadcast when our men’s basketball team played them over winter break, puts Marquette’s ad in sharp relief. The ad begins by identifying the school’s president, Monsignor Robert Sheeran, who narrates the entire ad, ending with him standing in front of a set of stained glass windows.

The first lines of the ad are worth quoting in full: “At Seton Hall, we believe in students and expanding their minds, hearts and spirits. A Catholic institution, we believe in who you are, and what you can be and always dreaming, reaching higher.”
The final scene gives us this tag line: “Seton Hall University: Home of HIGHER Education.”

Seeing Seton Hall’s ad prompts an interesting contrast. It includes in the text the fact that it is a Catholic school and speaks to students spiritual dimension. It is narrated by a priest in his clerical collar, who is pictured standing in front of stained glass windows.  And the ad’s tag line, “HIGHER Education,” contains a subtle but clear religious meaning.

Looking again at Marquette’s ad, we see only one brief image of Fr. Wild in clerical collar, from which we may deduce Marquette is a religious school. But that Marquette is a catholic institution goes utterly unmentioned.

So I ask again, what does our advertising say about our values and identity?

REAL GENTLEMEN
Dan Fitzgerald and Dominique James both made a new friend at the Marquette men’s basketball game against Valparaiso.  The team was shooting around more than an hour before the game, and one short five-year-old kid was shagging balls for all of them.

For most of the players, he was a ball boy at best and a mild nuisance at worst.
But Dan and Dom both shagged balls with him, let the kid guard them out on the three point line, and just generally played around with him.

This was a genuine moment of kindness and class, and while we expect that from Marquette players, it still deserves note and praise.

UW’s SHARED GOVERNANCE
The University of Wisconsin System recently added, by state law, a second student member to its Board of Regents.  These two students have a vote on everything, including tuition and the budget.

I know Marquette rarely likes to look to the UW as an example for emulation, but student involvement in the big questions of University governance is a conversation we need to start having on campus.

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