@bipocatwisco, an Instagram account dedicated to sharing the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and people of color on campus, posted a video Saturday showing a confrontation between a man on a motorcycle and four protesters.The Instagram account identifies the motorcyclist as a university employee.
Despite expanded testing efforts and increased enforcement of local public health guidelines, for weeks the UW-Madison campus has seen a steady increase in the number of reported positive COVID-19 cases.
Data collected from Dane and Milwaukee Counties from February through April revealed two different mutations of COVID-19, one from each county. The scientists determined the strain found in Dane County was from Europe, whereas the strain in Milwaukee originated from Asia, according to a UW news release.
University of Wisconsin-Madison officials plan to expand COVID-19 testing for students and staff in the spring semester as they prepare for another semester of hybrid instruction amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“Our numbers in Wisconsin are really pretty out of control,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, Chief Quality Officer at UW-Health. “We have a significant number of COVID patients here at UW Hospital.”
A party host who faces the possibility of thousands in fines for allegedly violating Dane County’s public health order limiting gathering size is an assistant with the outbreak-stricken UW football program.
UW will partner with Shield T3, a subsidiary of the University of Illinois System, to provide more frequent and regular testing for all students and employees on campus.
“So the trick in getting an accurate poll is getting a representative sample that’s the whole thing you’re trying to do is make sure the sample of people you have in your survey is representative of the population,” Prof. David Canon, of UW-Madison’s Political Science Dept. said.
In a long-awaited and altogether tense meeting Wednesday night, the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) Coalition has reached an agreement to meet with Chancellor Rebecca Blank at least twice a semester, with expectations to consult with other university administrators in between these meetings, in order to make progress on their demands.
As students look forward to remainder of fall semester, student unions, residence facilities should remain open, barring health concerns.
’We would like for our executive board members to be paid for their work and time,’ The Black Voice representative says.
The UW has partnered with Shield T3, a research initiative at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, aimed to advance COVID-19 testing efforts by developing a saliva-based PCR diagnostic test. This saliva-based test is estimated to provide an additional 10,000 tests per day as needed.
At least 13 residences near the UW-Madison campus are under investigation for violating public health guidelines over Halloween weekend as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise in Wisconsin.
While not subject to the county’s order because it’s considered state property, UW-Madison is also letting “many” employees work from home, according to spokesperson Meredith McGlone. She was not immediately able to provide a percentage but said the university has “also modified some office layouts to promote physical distancing for those employees who have to work on campus.”
David Canon, chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s political science department, said allegations of fraud are a “complete fabrication”. He said he expects little, if anything, to come from the Trump campaign’s attempts at litigation across the country.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to continue its hybrid learning model next semester with a drastically increased COVID-19 testing capacity, expecting more than 50,000 tests available weekly.
Song Gao, a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been aggregating cell phone data showing how far Wisconsinites are traveling each day.
“According to our tracking dashboard, overall mobility is already back to normal,” Gao said Thursday. “Also, the close contact (physical distancing) index has dramatically increased in September and October, which indicates more gatherings in the state.”
Enrollment at most University of Wisconsin campuses dropped again from last school year, a reflection of both the declining number of traditional high school students for colleges to recruit and the pandemic’s effect on college students.
While Hantz Farms didn’t dispossess anyone’s land, the threat is real, said Monica White, author of “Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement.”
“There has been a historical dispossession of land from Black farmers, and redlining is a part of that history,” said White, an associate professor of environmental justice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The current legal maneuvering is mainly a way for the Trump campaign to try to extend the ball game in the long-shot hope that some serious anomaly will emerge,” said Robert Yablon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. “As of now, we haven’t seen any indication of systematic irregularities in the vote count.”
President Trump’s campaign said it has filed lawsuits to stop counting ballots in Michigan and Pennsylvania to increase access to observe the tallying process. Franciska Coleman, assistant professor of constitutional law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, says stopping ballot counts is an ‘extraordinary’ remedy. She joins ‘Closing Bell’ to discuss.
Hunting also increased in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan after wolves in those states were federally delisted, adds Adrian Treves, an ecologist who leads the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
“Fruits are treated differently in Asian culture and in Japanese society especially,” Soyeon Shim, dean of the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told CNN in 2019. “Fruit purchase and consumption are tied to social and cultural practices.
Shalala previously served as President Bill Clinton’s secretary of Health and Human Services. Shalala also is a former president of the University of Miami and chancellor at the University of Wisconsin.
For the second consecutive week, the University of Wisconsin canceled a football game because of a coronavirus outbreak in the program.
The University of Wisconsin canceled this weekend’s planned football game against Purdue University after at least 27 positive cases within the program, including Coach Paul Chryst. Wisconsin had previously canceled its game against the University of Nebraska.
Nancy Wong, a professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s because stockpiling items, like we had seen earlier in the pandemic, serves as a security blanket.
“People feel assured and soothed by something that is concrete,” she said.
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds, has helped create a series of meditative soundtracks to cope with the anxiety of the election.
Broad-based shutdowns in March and April brought economic worries to places such as the rural upper midwest long before the virus was widespread there. Political scientist Kathy Cramer, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said this was certainly the case in Wisconsin, where an edge-of-your-seat finish is now playing out.
“There is no doubt that, in general, people were experiencing economic effects more than the health effects of the pandemic,” especially in the spring and summer, said Cramer. Cramer is also author of the Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said earlier on Wednesday that Trump appeared to be trailing Biden by about 22,000 to 23,000 votes in the state, which would amount to less than one percentage point.
The Abbot BinaxNOW tests can provide results in 15 minutes, according to a press release from the UW System sent Wednesday.
“Our universities are perfectly positioned to help Wisconsin combat the spread of COVID-19,” said UW System President Tommy Thompson on Wednesday.
Wisconsin has one of the highest proportions of white voters without college degrees in the country, and few voters of color. But Mr. Biden ultimately was able to eke about 20,000 more votes than Mr. Trump, with healthy margins in more populated counties like Dane, home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Milwaukee.
On Wednesday the University of Wisconsin announced its campuses will open free “surge testing sites” that provide rapid-result COVID-19 tests to off-campus community members, with the aim of alleviating the high demand for testing across the state.
The University of Wisconsin System has been provided with 250,000 rapid-result COVID-19 tests as part of a new partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to establish surge testing sites on UW System campuses.
’There has never been a more important time to support UW–Madison,’ Chancellor Blank says.
Testing sites will be set up at every University of Wisconsin System campus, including two-year campuses that are often located in more rural areas of the state. Most sites are scheduled to open up next week.
Midway through a second week of a COVID-19 shutdown, the players of the University of Wisconsin football team are in a holding pattern.
UW Political Science Professor Howard Schweber, who is an expert in constitutional law, judicial law, democratic theory and American politics, said the current political climate and election are complicated, and political parties are less sure than they thought they were with the election numbers and results.
For the first time in over a week, University of Wisconsin football coach Paul Chryst can return to work at his office at Camp Randall Stadium.
The UW-Madison Morgridge Center for Public Service’s BadgersVote initiative aims to educate and assist students in preparation for elections. Recent campaigns and events — such as Zoom the Vote sessions and Virtual Voting Office Hours — uphold the BadgersVote mission “to drive student civic and voter engagement.”
Madison residents living in 13 wards with high concentrations of UW-Madison students cast 13,759 ballots at their local polling places, a 31 percent decrease in votes cast in those same districts during the 2016 presidential election. Votes from the five wards that encompass the university’s residence halls and Eagle Heights graduate student neighborhood totaled 2,526 — less than half of the 5,692 from four years ago.
A day after lines at the Madison COVID-19 testing center stretched more than two hours long, the city’s health department is investigating several large gatherings over the Halloween weekend.
The University of Wisconsin System will pioneer a new, federally funded testing plan by providing 250,000 COVID-19 tests at on-campus sites as early as Thursday.
The violations come amid a surge of COVID-19 cases in the state and over a weekend in which Wisconsin reached the grim milestone of 2,000 deaths.
Letter to the editor: The state, like Wisconsin football, is setting records we don’t like: Rising COVID-19 cases, record hospitalizations, more deaths.
Letter to the editor: UW System policy sets one year as the default length for fixed-term appointments. Other UW campuses set the minimum position length at one academic year. UW-Madison can and should do better.
The University of Wisconsin has canceled its home game against the Purdue Boilermakers this game because of recent COVID-19 infections.
Public Health Madison and Dane Co. officials are working with the Madison Police Dept. and the City Attorney’s Office to deliver summons and complaints to the houses, the City explained. The agency is also reportedly working with UW-Madison officials to determine if disciplinary action is needed there as well.
Dreamers of UW-Madison apply for GSSF eligibility for first time.
UW students, seasoned poll workers alike brave COVID-19 to help voters.
A “Dreamer” currently protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the 22-year-old recent University of Wisconsin-Madison grad is authorized to work but can’t vote.
Former UW-Madison Chancellor Donna Shalala narrowly lost her bid for re-election Tuesday evening in a Florida U.S. House upset race for Democrats.
The Badgers are No. 1 in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine preseason poll released Tuesday, making it the sixth time coach Mark Johnson’s team has started a season in the top spot.
The program announced Tuesday it canceled this Saturday’s game against Purdue, marking its second straight cancellation after last week’s game at Nebraska also was wiped out due to the outbreak.
Four years ago, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Kathy Cramer, along with her daughter, dressed up in red, white and blue to cast her vote in the 2016 presidential election. Cramer has always “celebrated the act of voting.” But this year, she is checking in on polling sites on a much emptier campus and hoping people who have voted early stay home.
As the search continues for what started the COVID-19 outbreak inside the University of Wisconsin football program, athletic director Barry Alvarez and others are trying to learn from the situation to prevent from it happening again.
Ellen Abad Santos will be working printers Tuesday evening at the Chazen Art Museum, a new feature at all five on-campus polling locations this year. As Associated Students of Madison’s vote coordinator, Abad Santos has spent fall semester gearing up for Election Day, shifting in-person events online to make sure students have accurate information about voter IDs and polling locations.
On UW-Madison’s campus, temperatures in the mid-60s made the job of volunteers encouraging students to vote easier. Eight poll workers stood outside Memorial Union just before 1 p.m. asking everyone who walked by whether they’d voted.
Aly Orvis, a 20-year-old UW-Madison student who was a first-time poll worker on campus, said she heard there was a shortage of poll workers and decided to step up to help so older people who are vulnerable to COVID-19 didn’t have to.
