Upski named visionary

William "Upski" Wimsatt dropped out of Oberlin, the school that believes "one person can change the world." This month, he was named by the Utne Reader as one of the 1996 Utne Visionaries. Although he is less than welcoming of the fame, Wimsatt admits that it "gave me the courage to do what I want to do." He said he wanted to quit school.

The Utne Visionaries, a group of 20 men and women, were selected "not because they can see into the future - though some appear to possess this power - but because they all have the ability to permeate the present with little laser beams."

Wimsatt was cited for his work as a "graffiti writer, inner-city journalist, hitchhiker, chronicler and critic of hip-hop culture." His 1994 book Bomb the Suburbs warned against suburbanization of America, pointing out how suburbs "intensify segregation and mistrust."

"Let's celebrate the city," he wrote. "Let's celebrate the ghetto and the few people who aren't running away from it. Let's stop fucking up the city. Let's stop fucking up the ghetto. Let's start defending it and making it work for us."

Wimsatt himself is ambivalent about his status as visionary. He said the acclaim made him "appreciate the value of being appreciated. Imagine if you were told you were a visionary when you were four, so that you thought that everything you did was right."

Wimsatt said he used to think of himself as more of a visionary. Now he perceives himself as a distributor of ideas he has collected from other people.

"What I think is - I care what everyone thinks [about]. That's the formula for falling off … when you're being interviewed more than you're interviewing."

Wimsatt is trying, he said, to move from "an economy of grabbing credit" to "an economy of redistributing credit."

"I don't want to win a Nobel Prize. I want to work with 10 people who win Nobel Prizes."

"Maybe," he said, "we could trash everything I just told you, and I can tell you some of the people at Oberlin who I think are visionaries, and you can talk to them."

Success in the real world: Ex-Oberlin student Billy Wimsatt proves that students have a chance of achieving their hopes outside of Oberlin. (photo by Ed Lewis)