The Posse Program at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Mutual aid and excellence

    By Laura Salinger

    There is no doubt that the University of Wisconsin-Madison strives to recruit and retain students of color on their campus. Plan 2008, the PEOPLE (Pre-
College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence) program, and many other diversity initiatives work to draw diverse students to the UW-Madison
campus and keep them there.
    While enrollment rates for students of color have increased, they are still lackluster at best. If students of color do enroll, some still complain about the
climate on the predominantly White campus. Retention of these students is a challenge. But, imagine if these students had a posse to back them up.
Two UW-Madison students, who will graduate this May, attribute their success in college to the Posse Foundation, an innovative scholarship program which works
to identify, recruit, and train diverse student leaders from urban areas and send them off to college. Students must be nominated for the scholarship by a third-
party. Students are then hand-selected, from thousands of nominations, to form multicultural teams called “Posses.” Posses then partake in an intensive eight-
month Pre-Collegiate Training Program before heading off to college together where they function as a support system for each other and promote cross-cultural
communication on campus.
    UW-Madison currently partners with the Posse programs in Los Angeles and Chicago. Around a dozen students makeup each posse and posse members all
receive a scholarship that covers tuition costs. The program provides continued support and networking through the duration of a student’s enrollment.
If student testimony is a reflection of the program’s success, Posse gets an A-plus. UW-Madison graduates Kirstin McGinnis and Jason Jon Rea both adamantly
stress that Posse was crucial to their success on campus.
    “It has been very difficult for me, as a woman of color, on campus,” McGinnis said. “Life without Posse, would be like life without water at the University.”
McGinnis, who will graduate with a degree in sociology and head off to Wall Street to work as a financial analyst with Goldman Sachs (thanks to the networking
opportunities provided by Posse), attended high school at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences. As a high school student, she ran two businesses;
Educated Eats, where she sold natural snack foods, and a candle business selling personally designed candle arrangements. She was a dedicated student,
cheerleader, and tennis player.
    McGinnis was among 10 Chicago students out of approximately 6,000 that were chosen for UW-Madison’s Posse program. She soon became the “Mom” of the
group.
    “My posse will always say that when they first met me, they thought I was someone’s mom,” McGinnis said with a giggle. “They call me Mama Kirty.”
McGinnis contends that without Posse, many of her clan would not have successfully made it through to graduation at UW-Madison.
    “A lot of us wanted to leave at one time or the other, but we supported each other,” she said. “We stayed because we had each other.”
    McGinnis also stresses the importance of Posse as it relates to improving campus climate.
    “It is a wonderful University, but it isn’t very diverse,” McGinnis said about UW-Madison. “Posse is definitely a driving force to making the campus better.”
Jason Jon Rea asserts that Posse isn’t so much about skin color, as it is about increasing the pool of diverse student leaders at participating colleges and
universities. For Jon Rea, his Posse group is his kin.
    “It’s like a second family, rather than just a diversity program,” he said. “It’s not based on our skin color, it’s based on leadership ability.”
Jon Rea graduated from Belmont High School in Los Angeles. Belmont, a struggling urban school plagued by high drop rates, had a graduation rate of only 55
percent in 2004. Jon Rea said that only 30 out of the 720 students from his graduating class (99 percent of which are Latino/a) went on to college.
Jon Rea, who was born and raised in the Philippines until age 7, was a shining star at his high school where he was Junior Class President and a Varsity
volleyball player. His high school counselor nominated him to Posse. Like McGinnis, he doesn’t think he would have made it at UW-Madison without Posse.
“Without Posse, I don’t think I would have survived here,” Jon Rea said.
    Jon Rea plans to travel after graduation to visit relatives in the Philippines and tour Southeast Asia. After that, he hopes to intern with Posse at Tulane
University. From there, Jon Rea is planning to take the LSAT and attend law school with an eye on immigration law.
    Both McGinnis and Jon Rea say they can’t imagine their college experience without the Posse program. They will leave college, they said, with lifelong
friends.
“I can’t see myself not having them as friends when I graduate,” Jon Rea said about his posse, which consisted of African American, Filipino, Latino, Middle
Eastern, and White students.
    McGinnis concurs.
    “My posse, we will always be friends,” she said.
    More about Posse from their website www.possefoundation.org: The Posse Foundation identifies, recruits and trains student leaders from public high schools
to form multicultural teams called “Posses.” These teams are then prepared, through an intensive eight-month Pre-Collegiate Training Program, for enrollment at
top-tier universities nationwide to pursue their academics and to help promote cross-cultural communication on campus. The Posse Program has exhibited great
success over the past 18 years placing 1,850 students into colleges and universities. These students have won over $175 million in scholarships from Posse
partner universities and are persisting and graduating at 90 percent—a rate higher than the national averages at institutions of higher education. Posse currently
has sites in six major cities across the United States: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and its newest site in Atlanta.
    The concept of a Posse works for both students and college campuses, and is rooted in the belief that a small, diverse group of talented students—a Posse—
carefully selected and trained, can serve as a catalyst for increased individual and community development. As the United States becomes an increasingly
multicultural society, Posse believes that the leaders of this new century should reflect the country’s rich demographic mix, and that the key to a promising future
for our nation rests on the ability of strong leaders from diverse backgrounds to develop consensus solutions to complex social problems. One of the primary aims
of the Posse Program is to train these leaders of tomorrow.   
(Above)  Members of the Posse Program celebrate at a graduation party hosted by
the UW-Madison; (right)  Jason Jon Rea