A Final Step: Saying Goodbye to Boo-U by Jaiden McCauley

​I never planned to be a “college person.” To me, higher education seemed like a mountain of debt and a one-way ticket out of the town I loved, a gamble that I didn’t want to take. I planned to let the academic world pass me by. 

Then there was "Boo-U." 

Since this campus sat right in my backyard, the walls that kept me out suddenly crumbled. It wasn’t some daunting, distant institution; it was the building down the road. It offered a low-risk way to test my own potential without the price tag that a traditional university would otherwise charge. I signed up for one class, thinking I would prove myself right and then quit. Rather, what I discovered was a passion I didn’t know I had.  

That first semester, I walked into an English class with Katie Kalish. I searched for an exit, but she gave me a reason to stay. She gave me the confidence and the guidance I felt I needed to continue, and school started to be a place where I could be comfortable and really belong. Katie and I continue to talk today, and she is the kind of mentor who molded my life. She not only taught me the way of college writing, but she also proved to me that I was a successful student.  

The real magic of this campus, though, is the tight-knit community that makes it so easy to talk to whomever you want on this campus. It’s the kind of place where every teacher is "your" teacher, even if you aren't on their roster. I remember one day spiraling over a speech assignment. I had struggled for hours and was walking into the building frustrated and in tears. As I was heading in, Marc Seals was heading out. He didn’t lead with a lecture; he just pointed out the planes in the sky, making small talk to help me catch my breath. 

When he asked if I was okay, I felt comfortable enough to ask him for advice on a class he wasn't even teaching. He stopped, gave me the guidance I needed, and I went home that day and finished my speech. That accessibility, that feeling that a professor will pause their day in the parking lot to help a struggling student, is what made "Boo-U" home. 

But the tragedy of the coming closure is not just my story. This campus has long served as a place for those who couldn’t leave Baraboo. It has been where both high school students doing dual-enrollment credits have had a jumpstart in higher education, as well as locals gaining a specific degree in order to move up in a job without relocating their families. You had people you went to high school with, or neighbors who knew you from the grocery store, all trying to figure out their next move in the same hallways. 

That is the true heartbreak of losing this place. For many of us, this campus wasn’t just a collection of classrooms; it was the place that gave us the choice to choose. It allowed us to stay rooted in our community while growing our minds. 

In the looming final days, I’m incredibly thankful I took that leap. “Boo-U” showed me, and so many of my peers, that we could do more than we ever thought we could. The physical location is closing, but the confidence it afforded a hometown kid who “wasn’t going to college” is here to stay.