The University of Wisconsin at Madison got a quick refresher course in crisis management 101 last week. It seems the admissions office and publications staff electronically
manipulated the cover photo for the campus' fall guide to include an African-American student in a crowd of all-white Badger football fans. A campus newspaper found out, and the
media frenzy began.
To the school's credit, the PR department made two key policy decisions within 24-hours of the story breaking, according to Patrict Strickler, director of univeristy
communications: "To have the people involved stand up in the light of the media, do the interviews, admit the error and apologize for it, [and] to reprint this four-color, 40-page
brochure, 110,000 copies, in its entirety."
Cost of the reprint? A whopping $60,000 in private funds. "We couldn't possibly explain to taxpayers why we would spend their money [on this]," Strickler says. No doubt.