So much is being said about the "west side" of Oshkosh and the "north side" of Oshkosh. I have heard much about disparities and one side supposedly being called a ghetto while the other is elitist. I have heard stories about families moving from the north side of Oshkosh to the West side and never hearing from their old friends and neighbors again. I have also heard of families moving from the west side to the north with their neighbors questioning why. There is a lot of conjecture and finger-pointing about this, that, and every other thing. It seems like Oshkosh has taken rivalries to a whole new (unhealthy) level. I decided to examine this a little more closely in an effort to try and understand the different cultures in our community and why they continue to separate themselves.
I am a transplant from Sheboygan by way of Manitowoc. Manitowoc was lucky. Only one high school seems to mean one community. Sheboygan had two high schools (North and South) and an alternative school (Central). Conveniently, North was on the North side and South on the south side geographically. Central was downtown and had students from both of the North and South attendance areas. However, rivalries were friendly with one school coming to the support of another when necessary. Of course it was/is not always wonderful. We still had/have TP-ing. One year South students TP-ed North's radio tower. My mother and husband went to South and I went to North, so there is a lot of jokes about North being built over a landfill and South over a swamp. My mom's favorite is, "I'd rather sink than stink." Like swamp gas is a bed of roses. Yeah, North has to resurface their fields every few years and South has problems with moisture and foundations sinking, but so what. When they were built, that is the only way school districts could afford land.
The big thing between the two schools was that South supposedly was the poor school and North the rich school. The majority of the elementary schools I attended were on the south side, so the logic seemed to be true as I was poor growing up, welfare and everything. I went to North for middle schools and high school. Still poor, but now poor on the North side. Kent went to South. His family was middle class and several of his friends were "poor" but some were quite well off. As it turns out, there are poor kids and rich kids in every school. The concentrations change over time when new, "rich" neighborhoods become older. As the neighborhood ages, more and more properties become rentals and the economics drop. New suburbs pop up all over the outskirts of town and the neighborhood evolution goes on. When I was really young, the welfare apartments we lived in became surrounded by some really nice ranch homes that were then surrounded by some pretty snazzy "big" houses.
In high school, I lived in a rental in an older neighborhood one block from a seedier neighborhood you wouldn't want to walk through at night (yeah, Sheboygan has a few of those). Many kids I went to school with lived in nice houses in beautiful neighborhoods but to say North was the "rich" school was no more accurate than calling South a poor school. So what does this mean about Oshkosh. Well, maybe those same myths do not hold true here.
Let's start with geography. We hear "north" side and "west" side in many references, particularly regarding the school district. If that is related to geography, than looking on a map, the west side gets screwed when it comes to schools and resources. As it turns out, the geographical center of the city is roughly Witzel and Sawyer. However, the geographical center of the school district is roughly 9th Ave and Koeller. So, the East side of OASD encompasses North High, West High, East High (of course), Tipler, Merrill, Webster, Lakeside, Smith, Shapiro, South Park, Washington, E. Cook, Lincoln, Oaklawn, Read, Roosevelt, Franklin, and Jefferson. The west side has a highway, Walmart, oh, and three schools: Oakwood, Traeger, and Green Meadow.
Now let's look at the north side versus south side. Remembering that the OASD center is roughly 9th Ave and Koeller, the North side has Oakwood, Roosevelt, Franklin, Read, Washington, Webster, E. Cook, Oaklawn, Merrill, Lincoln, Tipler, all of the high schools and all of the charter schools. The south side has Green Meadow, Lakeside, Shapiro, Traeger, Smith, Jefferson, and South Park. No high schools, no charters.
Well, you could go back to the Oshkosh way of looking at things and stick with north side and west side. The biggest problem is that you would be alienating the east side and south side. Not too conducive to community unity. Looking at the North High attendance area versus West High's attendance area might work until boundaries change with the ever evolving neighborhoods. Not to mention, when I hear the "west side" discussion, it is usually implicating west of 41, thereby eliminating West High school from the discussion.
So, what is this culture of separation? Seems to me, nothing more than group trying to build themselves up by tearing down the other. I think both are equally to blame and both hold in their hands the means to stop this utter garbage: stop perpetuating the alienation. No, don't stop discussing the problem, but quit adding to it by calling each other names, pointing fingers and judging, and saying "poor me" or "damn them" at every opportunity. Many on the West side do not have preconceived judgments about northsiders. Many on the north side could care less about the west side. Quite a few of us aren't from Oshkosh and have no use for perpetuating stereotypes and myths and politicking.
I attended several basketball games this last year. That is remarkable in that I do not have kids in high school and didn't even like basketball enough to attend games when I was in high school and we went to state several times. What I found was an extraordinary group of adults and children all having fun. There was some boo-ing on both sides and plenty of cheering on both sides. No one was chanting that North was a ghetto. No one was pulling up in limos from the west side.
Then this restructuring came up and you hear BOE members not pointing out disparities or false ideologies in order to address and correct them. You hear BOE members saying they are sick of their children being told they go to a ghetto school. You have BOE members calling parts of the community elitists. District administrators are afraid of west side parents turning schools into clubs for west-side parents. West side groups of parents are wondering why are they always pulled to solve someone else's perceived problems. "West side" parents wonder why "north side" parents cannot see the low income apartments, rentals, and older homes west of 41. West side parents also wonder about the million dollar homes on the so called poor North side. North side parents wonder why west siders don't want anything to do with them.
Here is what I found in talking to people from all parts of our community. Much, if not all of the finger-pointing is based on myths. There are rich, poor, and in between everywhere in this district. Concentrations shift and neighborhoods evolve. It used to be that North was the rich school and West was inhabited by "shit-kickers." Ironic, isn't it. Unfortunately, one can choose to support and believe what one wants whether it is true or not. Talking to students from both high schools, with the exception of one BOE member's child the consensus is that the biggest problem regarding rivalries is the adults. So, maybe the adults need to take some lessons from the kids, and get over it and grow up.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Compass Culture in Oshkosh
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1 comments:
I understand why you selected the methodology you used to examine the situation and I appreciate the conclusions but there are a number of factors the you chose not to explore that may help to demonstrate why this issue is more complicated than most people may realize.
First, starting examining the geography of the city is absolutely the correct way to begin. Unfortunately, beginning by searching for the city’s contemporary center of gravity is not. That center has changed too frequently over the years to ever establish itself as being a cultural, population, or commercial hub from which the city grew concentrically.
The real place to start is with the Fox River. Oshkosh wouldn’t be here were it not for the Fox River, it has always existed around the river, and it is something we will always have to contend with even as it begins to become less vital to the city’s economy as Oshkosh transitions away from a manufacturing economy.
The river is a huge psychological impediment and historically has always been. This goes back to the old Athens-Brooklyn days of the 19th Century and is something that maintains itself to this day. I vaguely recall stories of roving gangs during that time that would duke it out for the honor of their respective side of town. I get a visual not unlike Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” but in Oshkosh and with German immigrants.
Part of this phenomenon was a transportation issue. I’m pretty sure there was only one bridge linking the two sides of the city during the Golden age of the lumber years during the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. That means an entire generation would have likely had to gone well out of its way to get from one side of the city to the other, and some of that precedent seems to have been passed on from generation to generation through the years.
It’s kind of strange but for the West side of the city was the poor side while the North side was the enlightened home of the landed. In the 1060s, 1970s and 1980s this began to change dramatically. There was almost a magnetic reversal of the poles as the lumber mills began closing, the city began to decline economically and really had that feeling that it was teetering on the precipice of becoming a full-fledged member of the Rust Belt. That didn’t happen, but what did happen is the actually began to divide itself in to three distinct sections (something that you alluded to in your post).
The first section I’ll call the Old West Bank. This encompasses the west side between the Fox River and Highway 41. This has traditionally been a working-middle class section of town and likely will remain so (with the obvious exception of some of the more recent developments south of Ardy and Ed’s).
The second section I’ll call the West Side and is everything west of Highway 41. This is pretty much what everyone refers to when they say “West Side” these days when they want to load that phrase with all of the social and economic meaning they can find. This part of town has experienced the most commercial and residential growth in recent years: from Wal-Mart/Festival Foods/Lowes to the hospitals to Carl Traeger school to the many subdivisions, etc. This has been great and is the kind of growth Oshkosh should hope for continue to strive for.
This has largely happen because the area west of 41 was really the only place left for the city to grow due to some absolutely asinine city planning on the North side, which is exactly what you think it is: everything North and East of the Fox River.
Growth on the north side is next to impossible in the way it has occurred on the west side. Instead of being able to grow beyond the highway, the north side has painted itself into a corner by essentially forbidding any grow and/or development north of North high school. The reason for is simple: the landfill, the prison, County Park and the Winnebago Mental health basically form a barricade that keeps growth from expanding in any meaningful sense north of Highway 41 and East of Lake Butte des Morts. No wants to live next to a prison and no one wants to live downwind from the county dump (neither of which should have ever been built so close to an urban area). WMH is s different story since it’s been there forever. County Park would have been a wonderful place to develop around, but also complicating matters is the Industrial park just to its south.
So the city limit of Oshkosh’s north side is pretty much Smith Street. That right there is really enough to choke off growth on one side of the city, but there’s another huge obstacle to growth on the north side: the University. A huge swath of the north side has been essentially reserved for student housing. This is mostly in parts of town that are actually historic areas but have been left to rot by “landlords” who can rent cheaply to students and never worry about marinating their properties. From an economic standpoint this doesn’t help since 10,000 (1 in every 6 or 7 people living within the city limits) is almost by definition beyond poor. This happens in almost every college town, but is exasperated on a cultural level by the lack of integration between the city and UW-O. That’s been changing in recent years, but for a long time the area around the university was essentially an island and unless you worked there or went to school there, you really had no other business there.
The student housing situation is changing too. The new apartments being built between Wisconsin and Jackson Streets (appropriately within crawling distance of Molly’s… Woo-hoo!) may free up some more territory in old student housing neighborhoods that someone will buy and renovate and punt off to a family or two. Who knows?
So while the west side has grown and prospered, the north side has stagnated and even declined. (The loss of the hospital and the frustrations over the downtown redevelopment have only added to the problem on the north side.) In the middle is the Old West Bank, really just doing what it’s always been doing for years now – and can you really blame them for wanting to keep their wagon hitched to the West Side after all of these years?
Redistricting may be a necessity to balance out the utility and efficacy of the high schools, but it will not solve the soft animosity each side of the river has for the other.
In fact, it’s you've said it’s really not that much of a deal among the actual students, who know each other from activities like soccer in the summer, etc. Among high school graduates who eventually go off to college the rivalry becomes merely playful, if not null and void all together, when they finish their studies.
The rivalry is on its way out, but it will take a while – in my estimation at least a generation. Maybe two. That may seem like a long time, but you have to remember that we’ve also come a long way from the days of roving gangs. Think of it as the globalization of Oshkosh – and as the world gets smaller, so to will Oshkosh.
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