Using data from County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program, 24/7 Tempo identified the least sleep deprived metro area in every state. Four states — Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont — have only one metro area. As a result, these areas rank as the least sleep deprived in the state by default only.
November 19, 2021
Research
Inside the Bitter Debate Over How to Manage Wolves in Wisconsin
Quoted: “Wolves are moving south, and they have been for a while,” says Tim Van Deelen, a professor of wildlife ecology at UW-Madison with a focus on large mammals in the Great Lakes region. “We’ve seen wolves go through Chicago. We know one wolf was killed in a cornfield in Indiana. And if you think about the most direct route, they would walk right through Milwaukee. That is part of how wolves disperse. Is it common? No. But is it out of the realm of possibility? No.”
Higher Education/System
‘You’re only as old as you feel’: Tommy Thompson talks about turning 80
Tommy Thompson has achieved many milestones in his long public service journey, and he’s about to hit another one. Wisconsin’s longest serving governor is about to turn 80-years-old.
From the office space overseeing his Alma mater in Madison, UW System’s interim President Tommy Thompson is ready to take on the day and another decade!
Campus life
Roadrunner by van, monkeypox: News from around our 50 states
Two top state Republicans are criticizing mandatory University of Wisconsin-Madison sexual violence prevention training that includes references to privilege, identity and critical race theory. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Tuesday wrote a letter to the school chancellor demanding answers on why graduate students are required to watch the two-hour webinar that university spokesperson John Lucas said includes “a brief reference” to critical race theory, which he said is supported by academic research and noted in the citations.
Latine Student Union requests funding for future programs at SSFC meeting
LSU plans to host Latine Ball, community Day of the Dead celebration.
‘A toxic environment’: The other costs of Greek life housing
Participating in Greek life is typically known to be a sizable expenditure — choosing to live in a fraternity house can cost anywhere from $4,200 to $18,000 a year, according to the Interfraternity Council. According to the Panhellenic Association, living in a sorority house can range from $7,700 to $11,980 a year. In addition to live-in costs, semesterly membership dues, which also range in price, are required of all members.
What happens when a fraternity dies?
Senior Cal Floyd opened up about Psi Upsilon at UW-Madison, and its challenges this semester with finding incoming freshmen to rush at the beginning of the year. He also explained why the fraternity’s decision to rush online ultimately made this semester Psi Upsilon’s last.
State news
From books to museums, here’s where you can learn about Native peoples in Wisconsin during Native American Heritage Month
Quoted: What do you know about the Native peoples who have called Wisconsin lands their home for thousands of years?
November is Native American Heritage Month and is a good opportunity to learn about the history, culture and sovereignty of the 11 federally recognized tribes in Wisconsin and the Brothertown Indian Nation, which hopes to regain its federal status.
Most people know little to nothing about Native Americans, said Aaron Bird Bear, director of tribal relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Keeping ourselves ignorant about Indigenous nations, about our shared history and our treaty-based relationships with Indigenous nations is a form of collective amnesia,” Bird Bear said.
“One thing we would hope is that people really think deeply during Native American Heritage Month of how they can interrupt or arrest settler colonialism itself, which is a process by which the vast majority of U.S. society knows little to nothing about the people who’ve lived here for 20,000 years and counting.”
Crime and safety
UW-Madison student searches for answers after hit-and-run
Alex Lehmkuhl says the incident happened just after 2 a.m. Nov. 1 in downtown Madison near the corner of Main and Bedford Streets.
Community
Commemorative plaque on Richard Davis Lane helps to preserve jazz legend’s legacy for generations of Madisonians to come
In 2018, a new street in the Darbo-Worthington Neighborhood on Madison’s east side was created in honor of the legacy of Richard Davis, a Madison jazz legend and Professor Emeritus of Bass at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught for nearly four decades. Now, after a fundraising effort throughout the pandemic, Davis’ former student and mentee, Wilder Deitz, has honored the man who inspired him and so many others with a commemorative plaque to accompany the street sign on Richard Davis Lane.
Arts & Humanities
Campus a capella groups unite for combined showcase
Pitches and Notes and Fundamentally Sound, two student a cappella groups, will take the stage for a combined show at Shannon Hall at Memorial Union Friday.
Athletics
Why the Badgers expect a smaller crowd at Camp Randall despite being in the hunt for Big Ten title
Tens of thousands of seats were empty during the University of Wisconsin’s football game against Northwestern last week at Camp Randall Stadium.
Emails offer look inside the search that ended with Chris McIntosh hired as Wisconsin athletic director
In introducing him at a June 2 event at the Kohl Center, Blank said she was convinced that McIntosh was the person to lead the athletic department for the next 10 to 20 years through changes to the college athletics landscape.
Opinion
Revising department handbooks to better support grad students (opinion)
As members of Catalysts for Science Policy, we recently examined 34 departmental handbooks from graduate programs in science, technology, engineering, math and medicine fields at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The goal of this policy analysis was to act as a case study, reviewing and analyzing current handbook policies to better understand their utility as a rapid and feasible first step in establishing a healthy environment for graduate students. We assessed the handbooks based on mentorship guidelines developed by Future of Research, evaluating their policies in several categories: mentoring; academic and nonacademic misconduct; transparent accountability; diversity, equity and inclusion; and graduate student representation in decision making.
UW Experts in the News
Kyle Rittenhouse trial: Will there be a mistrial and what will that mean?
“From the defense point of view, to get a mistrial is generally considered a favorable thing,” said Ion Meyn, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “If you’re the defense, you’re definitely going to be doing this.”
Kyle Rittenhouse trial: Jury weighs verdict for 4th day; MSNBC ban
Still, the defense must explain to the judge why what happened hurt Rittenhouse, said Ion Meyn, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.“You can’t just say the state gave me a lower-quality video and therefore I get a mistrial,” Meyn said. “That’s a losing argument for sure.”
Jury in Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Has Deliberated for 23 Hours With No Verdict
“You can’t read anything into it in terms of the length of the deliberations other than it’s so intensely stressful for the parties,” said Ion Meyn, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Rittenhouse Jury Enters 24 Hours of Deliberation, Likely to Worry Defense, Experts Say
“Like the Chauvin and Zimmerman cases, this case raises tough issues of self-defense,” Ion Meyn, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, told Newsweek. “Unlike those cases, this case involves four separate incidents, each requiring a complex set of considerations. Given how many people were shot or shot at, I think this case is even more complicated.”
Analysis: Here’s why Kyle Rittenhouse is likely to be acquitted — and why the law on self-defense must change
Column by John, Gross, director of the Public Defender Project at the Wisconsin Law School at UW–Madison.
UW-Madison Related
Senators erupt in partisan sniping over Soviet upbringing of Biden’s pick for top bank regulator
Omarova earned an undergraduate degree from Moscow State University before emigrating to the U.S. in 1991 and continuing her studies. She earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a law degree from Northwestern University. She then worked at Davis Polk & Wardwell, a top New York firm, where she focused on corporate transactions and advising financial industry clients on regulation. She also served in the Treasury Department of Republican President George W. Bush’s administration as a special adviser on regulatory policy.
‘I Am Not A Communist’: Biden Nominee Responds To Right-Wing ‘McCarthyite’ Smears
Omarova said that her dissertation, the topic of which she says she did not choose and was assigned to her, was written on a typewriter and she did not bring a copy of it to the United States when she permanently left the Soviet Union to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991.
Saule Omarova, Biden’s comptroller nominee, is no secret communist
When she began her Ph.D. program, she chose to study American democratic theory. And when the Soviet Union collapsed while she was on exchange at the University of Wisconsin, she opted to stay in the U.S., she told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes last year.