Less than a day after UW-Madison abruptly ordered a two-week quarantine for students in Witte and Sellery residence halls, students Thursday were weighing whether to pack up and head home or hold out hope for a more normal semester while “stuck in the dorms.”
As she climbed down nine flights of stairs and stepped into the dark night in the pouring rain outside Sellery Hall, Lauren Tamborino described the scene as “apocalyptic.”
In response to spiking COVID-19 cases, the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to make classes virtual, restrict other in-person activities and quarantine students living in two residence halls, Sellery and Witte. The decision was made Wednesday and most restrictions will be in place until at least Sept. 25.
In an interview with PBS Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank defended on Friday the decision to offer a mixture of in-person and online classes, saying the university is taking steps to address the campus’ record-breaking COVID-19 test numbers.
UW-Madison retained its national rank as the 13th-best public college or university in the country, according to this year’s edition of U.S. News & World Report.
UW-Madison may scrap spring break from next semester’s calendar to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Noted: In the last presidential cycle, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim found that Russian-linked disinformation campaigns focused ads on the swing states of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in particular, targeting both sides of the political spectrum with inflammatory posts on race, gun rights and increasingly, feminism.
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has suspended in-person undergraduate instruction for two weeks, citing an increase of COVID-19 cases.
As the second University of Wisconsin campus switched to virtual learning because of an alarming rise in coronavirus cases Sunday, statistics show seven state communities where colleges are located are among the fastest-growing COVID-19 outbreaks in the nation.
The University of Wisconsin System is paying its former president his full monthly salary to perform a list of tasks, including making recommendations on the selection process for high-profile leadership searches.
Amidst rising tensions between the UW-Madison student body and administration, the Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) Coalition held a demonstration on the Gordon Dining and Event Center lawn Saturday to protest racial inequality and the UW’s “Smart Restart” plan.
Four days into a shelter-in-place order for students at a pair of residence halls on the UW-Madison campus, new window messages like ‘Let Us Go’ and ‘Help Us’ emerge, while online delivery boxes filled a USPS van outside Sellery Hall Sunday evening.
With the coronavirus positive case count climbing in Dane County as a result of more UW-Madison students becoming infected, and with some dormitories, fraternities and sororities in quarantine, there’s also a spike in demand on campus for virus testing.
More than half of sorority and fraternity houses near UW-Madison’s campus are now under quarantine for at least the next two weeks.
A doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison issued a public apology this week after accusations emerged online that they were presenting as a person of color despite being mostly of Italian ancestry.
Freshmen Lauren Tamborini and Bailey Donahue move out of Sellery Residence Hall at UW-Madison on Thursday. The students will be attending class online for at least the next two weeks. Citing rapidly rising COVID-19 cases including two straight days in which one in five student tests came back positive, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank locked down the state’s largest university campus for two weeks.
University of Wisconsin students gathered outside Gordon Dining Hall and Event Center to protest the university’s COVID-19 Smart Restart plan and demand racial justice on Saturday.
Students at UW-Madison, angry at the administration, made a symbolic gesture of the impact the restart to the school year has had: gravestones set in front of the dining hall that students in quarantine have to use.
As COVID-19 cases rise in Dane County and some call for UW-Madison to send students home, downtown businesses say they’re worried about what will come next.
In the first two weeks since students began returning to campus, over 800 students and staff tested positive, making up 65 percent of Dane County’s positive cases. The steady increase peaked on Sept. 9, with a record-breaking 487 people testing positive in 24 hours.
Uncertainty can provoke a vicious cycle of anxiety, says Jack Nitschke, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Our brains help us get good at what we’re doing,” he says
It is not unusual for communications people within the CDC to be involved in an MMWR report before publication, said Dr. Patrick Remington, a member of the journal’s editorial board and a former CDC staffer.
That involvement, however, was previously restricted to officials within the agency who let political leaders know what was coming so they could be prepared with a communications strategy, said Remington, now associate dean for public health at the School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Visitor restrictions at Madison hospitals will go into effect Tuesday in an effort to curb community spread of COVID-19 following a significant increase in confirmed cases in Dane County, said UW Health, SSM Health and UnityPoint Health ‒ Meriter Friday.
UW Health honored local emergency personnel and all first responders on the 19th anniversary of Sept. 11.
As the ACC and Big 12 kickoff their 2020 college football season on Saturday, the Big Ten’s Return to Competition Task Force “presented a safe resumption of sports competition” to eight university presidents and chancellors that reportedly ended successfully, and will lead to a vote on a return to play in the next 72 hours, per Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports.
There’s growing optimism that the University of Wisconsin will play football this fall.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said answers to medical questions, not lobbying, will dictate when Big Ten Conference schools can play football.
To reopen or not to reopen — this was the question plaguing university administrators nationwide ahead of this fall semester amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we have all experienced over these six months, the COVID-19 crisis has upended normalcy. From remote working to virtual learning, the loss of healthcare to the loss of loved ones, the coronavirus has forced us all to operate under a new, frightening reality. At the same time, it has brought into crisp focus our society’s greatest inequities and our leaders’ misplaced priorities.
Quoted: “We are in pretty uncharted economic territory,” said Laura Dresser, associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It’s not a fair election system when one side has such a severe election advantage, and it was done intentionally,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Prof. Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that Mendelsohn’s prediction was unlikely.
“The backers of Jill Stein were young and disaffected from the political system,” said Barry C. Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Typically, minor-party voters are looking for somebody that’s different from what the major parties are offering.” (The Libertarian candidate in 2016, Gary Johnson, received more than 106,000 votes in Wisconsin.)
“The state’s capacity for testing is very good and continues to increase,” Dr. Ajay Sethi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health said via email.
After a brief stint as Administrator of the Madison Agrigenetics Research Laboratory, he returned to the U.W. to administer the newly formed Biotechnology Center and then the Institute for Enzyme Research until his retirement in June 1992.
Donna was employed by the Records and Registration Office at the University of Wisconsin where she thoroughly enjoyed her time at the University.
Robert was a professor of Neurophysiology at UW-Madison for 35 years.
AUW-Madison graduate student apologized and resigned from a teaching position at the university after falsely claiming to be a person of color.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has provided an explanation for a survey question shared on social media Wednesday night.
