Humans of UWL: Morgan Hose
Morgan Hose. Photo taken by Isabel Piarulli.
May 13, 2023
“I have wanted to go to law school all four years of college and I knew that was the goal I was working towards,” said Hose.
With finals week coming to a close, many University of Wisconsin-La Crosse students are anticipating spring graduation, one of those students being our very own Executive Editor, Morgan Hose. With an acceptance letter to the New England School of Law, she is on her way to Boston in less than a month to pursue a career as a lawyer.
Pursuing a career in law is not a newly found goal for Hose. “When the 2016 presidential election was going on I was intrigued by the media coverage of it and the politics of it all, the involvement of everything, and how engaging it was to everyone in the United States,” said Hose. “I decided then that I wanted to be a politician.” When researching what education politicians receive, she found her favorites at the time had law degree backgrounds.
It wasn’t until she came to UWL that her desire to be a politician shifted. “When I entered college, I realized that politics is not the way to go, and it wasn’t something that was very interesting to pursue as a profession anymore. It was more the law side that got me interested in being a lawyer,” Hose said.
Through all four years of her undergrad, Hose double majored in political science and communication studies and minored in legal studies while on the pre-law track.
Less consistent was her decision to stay at UWL all four years. Hose said, “Freshman year I applied to transfer to three schools; U of Iowa, U of M [University of Minnesota Twin Cities], and UW-Madison again. I had decided to transfer to U of M and that’s when COVID hit, and we had all been sent home.”
She continued, “We didn’t know how long COVID was going to be, and I knew at that time I wanted to go to law school, so it seemed like the smart decision to stay here and save money.”
Hose enjoyed classes in both of her majors and her legal studies minor. There were a couple of classes most notable to her. “POL 310 with Kristina LaPlant, public opinion and political behavior, that class was very fascinating to me. I loved LaPlant as a professor.” Hose also mentioned CST 271, media and society, and judicial process, POL 306 with Samuel Scinta.
Outside of The Racquet Press, Hose has served as a College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CASSH) senator in Student Association for two years along with being president of the UWL Pre-Law Society. Additionally, she served as secretary and social media manager for the Golden Key International Honour Society and worked as a public speaking tutor in the Murphy Library Tutoring Center.
“This year I had the honor of serving as the first student representative for UWL for The League of Women Voters,” said Hose. The League of Women Voters is a non-profit, non-partisan organization working to empower voters and defend democracy. Through this position Hose was further exposed to voter turnout and non-partisan election engagement. “I got to meet a wonderful group of women who were very knowledgeable and involved in the community,” she said.
Off-campus Hose worked as an intern at Hale, Skemp, Hanson, Skemp & Sleik; a law firm in downtown La Crosse. “That was mainly to get experience and to see how a law firm operates in real life, and to make connections and network with attorneys in La Crosse that cover a wide area of law,” said Hose.
Hose was also a server at Big Al’s Pizza Restaurant in downtown La Crosse, and to make some extra money during her senior year she was a shot girl at Legends Nightclub.
“I was hired as the student government reporter for the Racquet after we [UWL students] had already been sent home because of COVID,” said Hose. After one semester of writing articles in that position, she was promoted to assistant editor. Hose worked in that role for a year and a half before being promoted to executive editor in May of 2022.
Being with The Racquet Press for six semesters and throughout three different positions, Hose became further engaged on campus and well-networked with faculty, staff, and students. She explained it enabled her to know about things happening on campus she otherwise would not have. “I kept up to date with exactly how well our sports teams were doing, what events were going on in social justice, what organizations are focused in each area, and same with what the art students were doing,” said Hose.
She continued, “Not to say that UWL is cliquey, but it can be very divided for being such a small campus. So it [The Racquet Press] gave me the opportunity to build bridges between all these different aspects of campus that are really unique.”
It is an important objective for The Racquet Press to cover events happening in various realms of UWL, reporters and editors attend and conduct interviews to write their pieces. Hose said, “It [working at The Racquet Press] was kind of like a pass…to have an excuse to go to an event that I normally wouldn’t have or talk to someone I normally wouldn’t have. It gave me the confidence to do a lot of things that I always wanted to but didn’t know how to go about doing.”
Hose identified herself as a typically independent person who prefers to take on projects by herself, but her role as executive editor changed that mindset. “Being executive editor allowed me to place trust in other people and give them the reins to do what I know that they are good at,” said Hose. “You can go a lot farther with people than you can alone, and I don’t think I ever realized that or practiced that until I was in this position.”
When asked what she thinks the most impactful thing The Racquet Press has done for UWL’s campus in the three years she has been involved, Hose identified the coverage of issues within UWL’s School of Education (SOE).
“Getting to use this publication as a way for them [SOE students] to make their voices heard, make their issues heard, not just on a local level, but a regional level,” Hose said. “Seeing the effects that we can have without having any individual ties to the School of Ed.”
The advice Hose has for incoming college students is something she too lives by. She said, “Work hard, play hard…It has always been my goal over the past four years to have an equally good time as it has been to work incredibly hard.”
Click here to read Hose’s articles with The Racquet Press.
