George Cutlip: Living life on the Terrace
By Brooke Appe ’12
It’s a foggy Friday morning on the Terrace. Fresh rainfall lingers on chairs and tables and a slight chill hangs in air. All is quiet except for the laughter of a group of kids squeezing as many as they can on the giant Terrace chair for a photo, and the musings of George Cutlip, a UW-Madison alumnus and Memorial Union Building Association (MUBA) Trustee. He looks out to where the Terrace meets the lake – what he calls, “the visible edge of university life.”
“How many scientific ideas have been hashed out right here? How many people have fallen in love or broken up on this Terrace?” he asks.
Though there are no definite answers, the questions themselves indicate something greater. They point to the stories, the education, and the collective experience everyone shares as proud Union members and Badgers. They point to the significance of this place all the way up to larger entities like campus and community, and down to the life of one man.
“I was always destined to be at Wisconsin. I grew up at the Union and this was my house,” said George.
George isn’t entirely exaggerating. Having just made a generous donation to the Union, he recounts his time – or perhaps lifetime would be more fitting – at the Union. Both parents were involved in university and Union life. His father was both a professor of Journalism and Union Council Faculty Representative while his mother worked in the Political Science department. They met in South Hall and had to keep their romance a secret until they were married. Once they were, they lived in University housing and often came to the Union for meals. Union directors Porter Butts and Ted Crabb were “household names” as they were friends of his father.
“The Terrace was my playground—” he said, “—within some limits imposed by staff.”
When it came time for George to decide where he wanted to attend college, UW-Madison was an obvious choice.
“I couldn’t imagine not going here. I couldn’t imagine not being a Badger. I grew up with it all through high school – how was I supposed to go somewhere else and root for another team? I’m a Badger right down to my socks,” he said.
George attended UW-Madison and graduated in 1971 with a degree in Communication Arts. But attending the University in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was punctuated with political unrest. Madison was an epicenter for Vietnam protests – summoning the National Guard several times and causing many businesses on State Street to board up for protection. Despite this tense environment, George recounts that the Union continued “doing what it was doing.”
“The students ran the place and I think that’s what protected it. The majority of students had the sense that this place was ours and didn’t necessarily belong to the hierarchy of the university,” he said.
George finds the student-run programming with its success and longevity one of the most compelling aspects of the Union.
“If the students were to say, ‘We don’t like the program,’ the answer is: You are the program, so dive in and change it to what you’d like,” he said.
After receiving his degree, he went to New York City for several years to establish a career in public relations. He returned to Madison in 1975 and worked for the Wisconsin Historical Society as a public information officer for six and a half years. He continued to work in the field of public relations and became a MUBA Trustee in 2003.
Becoming a Trustee has allowed George to build upon the Union’s mission and conserve what makes it special as an institution for social education.
“What you see on the Terrace are the visible crosscurrents of the University – the students and faculty getting together,” he said. “On a summer afternoon you can get out here and listen to the bubbling and cross-fertilization of ideas.”
George’s involvement in MUBA has exposed him to how the Union impacts people in different ways. As a student, he was content with just spending time at the Union, but he has met many MUBA members who were heavily involved in Union programming as students through the Wisconsin Union Directorate (WUD) and Hoofers.
“Peoples’ passion for this place is very deep. Trustees who participated in one way or another when they got involved stuck with it. They didn’t know what a life-long connection they were getting,” he said.
Now with MUBA, George can help pinpoint what the Wisconsin Union needs going forward in order to maintain its relevance to the university and community. Part of that is the Memorial Union Reinvestment, which has already revamped the Terrace and will drastically update the building in the next several years.
“It’s an exciting time to be a Trustee,” said George. “I’m very pleased to help support this place because it helps the university, which has an impact worldwide. What we do here is important.”
George made a donation as part of the Memorial Union Reinvestment’s “75 for 75” campaign, which aims to find 75 people to contribute $75,000 each to the Union in the next 75 years. George cites the Union’s vital role on campus as a place of social education as his main motivation for donating.
“Anything this Union does as an institution helps the entire University,” he said. “There is no part of the university that doesn’t cross through here.”
Personal memories also compel George to contribute to the Union’s future. After all, he owes the Union Theater for his theatrical debut at the age of four.
“I was typecast as a child in a Christmas pageant,” he jokes.
But jokes aside, it’s easy to tell that George – gazing contently out on the Terrace – feels so at home here. And like any home, he wants to preserve what makes it so special to the community, university and himself for years to come.
