University of Wisconsin officials who want to ward off a rising COVID-19 caseload now must get permission from the Legislature to implement masking, testing or vaccination requirements, according to a plan Republicans adopted Tuesday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced it would require students, employees and visitors wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status starting Thursday, as COVID-19 cases surge and political pressure mounts.
ARepublican-controlled legislative committee will require University of Wisconsin System campuses to first get the committee’s approval before imposing mandatory masking, COVID-19 testing and vaccination policies.
The mask mandate could mark the first major change in UW-Madison’s fall plans. The university previously allowed vaccinated people to forgo a face covering, a policy that began in early June, but a concerning increase in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks that experts attribute to the delta variant of the coronavirus caused campus officials to reassess.
Noted: Some species’ hindmost legs can grow so long that competing suitors will line up to compare them. “Whichever male has the longest leg wins, and it’s the one that is going to mate,” Guilherme Gainett, a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me.
Some answers might be hidden in the harvestmen genome. Gainett and Sharma, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, recently teamed up with the genomics expert Vanessa González, of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, to cobble together the first-ever draft of the genome of Phalangium opilio, the world’s most widespread harvestman species.
Quoted: “For this idea of boosters, it’s going to be hard to control. You just have to rely on local public health departments and local providers to prevent that from happening,” said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Fascinated by the way these appendages develop differently, Guilherme Gainett at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues teamed up with genome specialists at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC to draft a sequence of the genome of a lab-raised harvestman.
“We’ve shown… how the combinations of these genes create a blueprint in the embryo to differentiate between what’s going to be a leg that is used for walking and what is going to be a pedipalp, which can be used to manipulate food and assess the surroundings,” says Gainett.
Construction of a separate facility for Usona comes as it conducts a phase 2 study of psilocybin to treat depression at UW-Madison and six other sites, including Johns Hopkins University and Yale University. An early phase, first-in-human study of a second, novel compound is planned for 2022.
The University of Wisconsin System will need to seek approval from the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) for any COVID-19 pandemic related regulation.
UW System spokesperson: “Today’s action feels like a political statement.”
The director of Wisconsin Public Media, Gene Purcell, has died following a traffic crash in Madison. Friends and colleagues say they’re heartbroken by the sudden loss of a man who lived a commitment to public broadcasting with humility and authenticity.
Noted: In Wisconsin, a Republican-controlled legislative committee passed a resolution Tuesday requiring University of Wisconsin campuses to get the committee’s approval for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination, masking or testing policies, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. Under the measure, the UW system will have to submit COVID-19 policies to the committee within 30 days. The committee will then have the ability to vote to suspend all or parts of the policies. Tony Evers, the state’s Democratic governor, does not have the ability to veto the committee’s actions.
Colleges across the state are working to reevaluate on-campus masking policies in the weeks leading up to the start of the fall semester, as new national data on the delta variant’s spread among vaccinated people,updated masking recommendations and political pressure further complicate a quickly evolving situation.
With four weeks left before the start of the fall semester, Marquette University officials announced that more than 85% of students have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
A news release Tuesday said the decision was made as the delta variant’s emergence has led to a rise in new COVID-19 cases. Although Dane County and the UW-Madison campus have higher vaccination rates than other parts of the state, the virus has continued to spread among unvaccinated residents.
Students, employees and visitors of UW-Madison’s campus will be required to wear masks inside, effective Thursday.
The move comes just hours after lawmakers claimed UW System must get approval from them.
Starting Aug. 5, all students, employees and visitors must wear masks when inside campus buildings.
Starting August 5, all staff, students, visitors must where masks in campus buildings due to rise in COVID-19 cases from the Delta variant, UW says.
Letter to the editor from Patrick Kass, director, transportation services, UW-Madison: Recently, we’ve had over 4,000 employees enroll in flexible parking options that allow them access to campus parking facilities without a commitment to purchasing a dedicated space for a full year. Combined with a robust bus rapid transit (BRT) system, these policies can build a network of transportation options that will allow our employees to access campus in convenient, cost-effective and more environmentally friendly ways.
The announcement came Wednesday morning, and amidst a resurgence of COVID-19 pandemic related regulations as cases are on the rise again — largely driven by the Delta variant.
The health system likened the new restriction to its extant policy of requiring them to have received a standard flu vaccine.
Classrooms ideal places for discussions about race, offer students chances to share perspectives outside social media.
Quoted: Although underpaid, poorly treated service workers certainly exist around the world, American expectations on their behavior are particularly extreme and widespread, according to Nancy Wong, a consumer psychologist and the chair of the consumer-science department at the University of Wisconsin. “Business is at fault here,” Wong told me. “This whole industry has profited from exploitation of a class of workers that clearly should not be sustainable.”
Quoted: “It’s conceivable that the two races in Wisconsin could unfold somewhat differently, said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The governor’s race will largely be about Evers’ handling of the pandemic, the budget he recently signed, and the state’s economic situation,” Burden said via email. “The Senate contest is more likely to focus on the Biden administration and whether the president’s efforts to address the pandemic and the economy are necessary remedies or harmful government overreach.”
Quoted: Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said she has some sympathy for Chris Cuomo and his desire to help his brother.
“As hard as it is to see your brother mired in controversy, your obligation as a journalist is to the public you serve,” she said. “If it’s true that Chris Cuomo drafted the statement later put out by the governor’s office or he encouraged an approach that emphasized contrition, his involvement was deeper than what he disclosed to viewers in May. That moves far beyond being ‘looped in to phone calls’ with staff members. It’s playing an active role in shaping the narrative of the controversy.”
Noted: Mildred Fish was born in Milwaukee in 1902; her husband, Arvid Harnack, was German. They met as graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, and eventually settled in Berlin.
