I love Marquette, I really do. I remember touring the university as a high school sophomore back in the spring of 2019. Being a kid from Boston, Massachusetts, looking to leave the Northeast and see what else the country had to offer me, Marquette seemed flawless in my eyes.
The students were nice, the professors even nicer and the city of Milwaukee itself had to have been the best part of it all. There were plenty of places in the city I could explore and learn what the Midwest truly has to offer. It had everything I wanted in a school, and at age 16, I already knew I wanted to go here.
Fast forward three years later and I am still beyond happy as a 19-year-old sophomore. I have made close friends, learned about being independent and eaten at the familiar “Culver’s” too many times to count. Even though I am happy, I have learned that Marquette is not flawless, because a problem remains: I still have never met anyone at Marquette from Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, or Connecticut.
At first, I didn’t mind. Throughout the first couple of weeks at school as a first-year student, I learned very early on that most of the students I was meeting were from the surrounding areas. Towns that I had never heard of quickly became familiar to me by week two of the semester after hearing about them so much. By the end of October, it felt that everyone was from either Naperville, Evanston or Schaumburg.
Of the Marquette first-year class, 41% of the class of 2025 are from Illinois and 33% of students come from Wisconsin. With nearly 75% of my sophomore class being from either Illinois or Wisconsin.
College is a place where students are supposed to learn about new subjects, explore new cultures and most importantly meet people from several different backgrounds. It is difficult to meet people of different backgrounds when more than half of our sophomore student body is from the same place.
I recognize that it can be expensive for students to pay out-of-state tuition as well as fly back and forth between the city of Milwaukee and cities in the Northeast, but I think that there is no excuse to have under 100 students from the New England area.
As a fellow East Coaster, I know firsthand what they look for. The stereotype that people from the Northeast are a little more on the “snooty” end is unfortunately true.
Students from the Northeast are not going to leave behind their Boston University, MIT or Boston College unless they have a reason to.
Marquette needs to be that reason.
I consider myself lucky to have been exposed to Marquette as a person residing in the Northeast. Although I grew up in Boston, my dad and step-family live in a suburb of Chicago known to many: Oak Park. I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to the area at a young age, and I knew I wanted to go to school in the Midwest.
I feel like I can do as much of my part as possible. I am constantly in contact with students in respective New England schools, talking to them about what Marquette has to offer and how attending the university will be one of the best decisions they could make.
However, I need to ensure that the university also feels that way. I love all of my friends from Wisconsin and Illinois, but I would love some other friends from the Northeast area and then some.
This story was written by TJ Dysart. He can be reached at [email protected].
