One of the first mock trial tournaments in which UW-Platteville competed was a regional qualifier in Chicago. UW-P had a rough time in the early rounds, but we had scratched out a few wins and got to the last round, needing two victories over Marquette University to qualify for the national championship tournament. Of course, poor, noncompetitive UW-P didn’t stand a chance against powerful, prestigious Marquette — but we beat them, and went on to win the Outstanding New School award at nationals.

Since then, we’ve played out that scenario over and over again, matched against such opponents as UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-La Crosse, University of Iowa, University of Minnesota, University of Illinois, Iowa State University, New York University, Brown University and many other competitive schools. In 2006 Boston University had won the national mediation championship three straight years. UW-P couldn’t possibly be the one to end that streak — but we did, and topped 22 other schools on the way to a national championship that year.

Barron’s Profile of American Colleges labels UW-P “non-competitive” in its admissions policies based on comparisons of such variables as minimum ACT scores and minimum rank in high school graduating class, but it’s a label that means absolutely nothing when applied to you, the individual UW-P student. Specifically, it does not mean that you cannot compete successfully against students from schools labeled competitive or highly competitive.

Labels, both negative and positive, have a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies when people accept them and then go on to act and live in accordance with them. Even labels that are narrowly applied, as the ones in Barron’s are, have a nasty way of becoming generalized in the minds of those who put their faith in them. The admissions policies of your school are non-competitive, therefore you cannot compete against a student from a school with a rating of highly competitive.

There’s a word for that, but I decline to use it in print. I’ll have to be satisfied to watch our students go out and demonstrate their competitiveness and achieve success not only in academic competitions, but also in their lives after they graduate from poor, old, non-competitive UW-P. I’ve got better labels for our students: “winners” and “champions.”

Author’s postscript: On October 23, the day after this article was written and submitted to The Exponent, UW-P’s mock trial team earned a perfect 4-0 win-loss record in the Norse invitational Tournament at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa and finished in a tie with Luther College for the tournament championship.  Other schools competing included UW-La Crosse, Loras College, Iowa State University, Grinnell College, Central College and St. Olaf College.  UW-P students Reed Kious, Nick Kohal and Inger Kromm won outstanding performance awards.