The state’s public employee pension fund lost another $10â??billion in October alone, making it a virtual certainty that – barring a dramatic turnaround in the stock market – retirees’ pension checks will shrink next year.
Madison police have released a sketch of one of the suspects involved in an armed robbery of a female UW-Madison student Monday night on Langdon Street.
Angel investing in Wisconsin will be dented by the global economic crisis, but not obliterated.
That’s the opinion of several investors attending the two-day Early Stage Symposium that finishes up today in Madison. Mentions the University Research Park’s 25th year.
When Lori Molitor’s 9-year-old daughter, Madison, participates in gymnastics, she wears a heel cushion. After her training session she ices. And before she goes to bed she stretches. All of this is done in hopes of keeping her injury-free as she continues her progression as a budding gymnast.
The Verona mother’s cautious approach with her daughter was borne partially from observing her eldest daughter deal with injuries while competing in sports, but many parents remain in the dark about the dangers of overtraining.
Quoted: Shari Clark, a physical and athletic trainer with UW Health Sports Medicine and a lecturer in the UW-Madison kinesiology department.
A growing number of retirements coupled with less-than-competitive faculty salaries in the University of Wisconsin System will critically challenge the system’s ability to attract and keep the best corps of academics, according to a report up for discussion at the UW Board of Regents meeting today.
Ten years ago today, human embryonic stem cells entered the popular vocabulary. The world hasn’t been the same.
The first report that the human cells had been isolated and grown by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison appeared in the journal Science, triggering a decade of fierce debate and great hope.
Many meetings aren’t worth their salt, but a meeting coming up at UW-Madison could be worth its salt and much more.
More than 20 food and ingredient companies will gather on campus Thursday to see what could be used in processed foods that works as well as salt as a preservative, with the goal being cutting down American salt intake without cutting down on flavor.
You could say that Kathi Bennett and the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team was a match made in heaven.
Bennett, after a three-season hiatus from coaching, was yearning to return to the profession in which her family name is synonymous with tough defense. And the Badgers, coming off a disappointing season, were a team desperately in need of a new defensive approach.
At 10 p.m. Tuesday, when the major networks projected that Barack Obama had won the presidency, Sharmarke Hamud, 19, and his five roommates grabbed an American flag and hit the streets.
What started at the Palisade Apartments, an upscale building at Johnson and Marion streets just off campus, turned into a spontaneous parade that made two trips to the Capitol, went up and down State Street, paused outside the beer garden at State Street Brats, went through the Union Terrace, picked up more revelers at Helen C. White Library and stopped traffic as it headed up University Avenue.
It gained and lost strength, but at its height, the parade was more than a thousand strong.
Five questions that face the University of Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team this season:
1. Is coach Lisa Stone’s job in jeopardy?
Certainly, last year’s disappointing 16-14 record fell short of the standards now set at the UW Athletic Department. That discontent was reflected by athletic director Barry Alvarez’s decision to deny a contract extension for Stone, who has three years remaining on her deal.
Should the Badgers live down to their preseason expectations — they were picked to finish 10th in the Big Ten by both the coaches and the media — pressure likely will mount on the program. On the other hand, expectations have been diminished to the point where a finish in the middle of the Big Ten pack by a team with only one senior could be interpreted as a sign that the program is back on track.
Barack Obama won this election in a landslide as well.
University of Wisconsin-Madison’s International Student Services held a mock election Tuesday for those on campus who are unable to vote because they’re not American citizens.
With 160 people casting mock ballots between noon and 8 p.m., the Obama-Joe Biden ticket received 134 votes — or 83.7 percent. The Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin received 15 total votes (9.4 percent), while the independent ticket of Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzales got five votes (3.1 percent). No other candidate received more than two votes.
“I think an Obama win would really change how others view the United States,” said Debbie Cheung, a native of Hong Kong and a UW-Madison finance major who has been living in the U.S. for four years. “Obama is from such a diverse background that he would definitely bring some different, diverse thoughts.”
Quoted: Katherine Cramer Walsh, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
WHITEWATER â?? University Police arrested Stephen D. Schuerr, 39, of Burlington on Tuesday morning on charges of carrying a concealed weapon and possessing a firearm in a state building.
The arrest took place on the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus without incident just after 8 a.m.
Schuerr is a student at UW-Whitewater and came to the attention of University Police after they received information that Schuerr had been carrying a weapon in a backpack that he also brought to campus. The University Police followed up on the information and were able to detain Schuerr before he went to class on Tuesday morning.
…the names of some newly registered voters have not appeared on the new statewide voter registration list, created in response to a federal law passed in 2006. That’s likely happening because these individuals, most of whom are UW-Madison students, registered with groups that collect registrations and then mail them en masse to the municipal clerk’s office; if these registrations were mailed after Oct. 15, the official cut-off date, voters have to register again on Election Day.
A 20-year-old female UW-Madison student was robbed at gunpoint Monday night while walking in a parking lot near her residence, police said.
Madison police said the robbery happened about 11 p.m. in the 100 block of Langdon Street downtown.
UW-Madison engineers and physicists have developed a method of measuring how strain affects thin films of silicon that could lay the foundation for faster flexible electronics.
The details offered in a UW news release definitely fall under the “iDGi” category, but we welcome anything that promises faster flexible electronics. We offer the details for those who might get it.
Quoted: Max Lagally, the Erwin W. Mueller and Bascom Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at UW-Madison
Thanks to University of Wisconsin track team senior Chavon Robinson’s idea, roughly 110 UW student-athletes were joining the rest of America in voting in Tuesday’s historic election.
Robinson’s Sport the Vote program, initiated as an attempt for her to get involved after having a discussion with a “more politically aware” friend, allowed UW student-athletes to register to vote at convenient locations on campus.
“Everyone wants to be a part of this huge election, and registering was the first part,” Robinson said. “I was just excited to be able to give them this opportunity so they could exemplify their enthusiasm at the polls.”
Three friends at a house party near the UW-Madison campus were beaten up by others from the party in a parking lot on Mound Street, police said. One of the friends ended up in the hospital, the other two bloodied and battered.
Madison police said the incident happened about 11:40 p.m. Friday in the 1100 block of Mound Street.
A plunging stock market is likely to result in a 1 to 3 percent pension cut for some 150,000 retired government workers in Wisconsin, the first reduction in pension payout in the retirement fund’s 26-year history.
While final figures won’t be calculated until January 2009, state officials have already sent out letters to retirees warning that pension checks might shrink. New payment levels take effect each May and are recalibrated annually.
A new report says the aging of the University of Wisconsin System work force will present a major challenge for the state in the next several years.
The report says one out of three UW System faculty and academic staff members is 55 or older, compared with one out of five 10 years ago.
Wilco doesn’t really do overtly political songs, Jeff Tweedy told the crowd Saturday afternoon at the Wisconsin Union Theatre during a show organized by the Obama campaign. The band had done their best to find songs in their repertoire that would fit a political audience, the lead singer said, but came up short.
“There’s a hope gap,” he joked.
In these last few days before the election, that hardly matters. Politics seem to spark like a current through everything, grasping everyone with unadulterated enthusiasm and nervous electricity leading up to Tuesday. This was never more evident than in the mostly student crowd of about 900 that turned out Saturday, corralled by a bevy of clipboard-clutching campaign volunteers. The event also featured appearances by Sen. Russ Feingold and Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, and was aimed at getting young voters out to the polls early.
….There’s no question that Bielema needs to practice what he preaches. That is, what happens is not nearly as important as how someone reacts to what happens. Even if he had a reasonable argument stemming from whatever disagreement that he was having with linesman Mike Dolce, he needed to move on to the next play after Dolce assessed the Badgers a five-yard penalty for obstruction. Bielema could not afford to vent or rant or take a “technical” with his team leading by 11.
That being said, the Big Ten needs to take a look at Dolce’s handling of the situation. In particular, the obstruction penalty.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — We haven’t heard a whole lot lately about how it’s not what happens over the course of the game, it’s how a team reacts to it.
That’s a go-to phrase in the Bret Bielema vernacular, a predictable opening statement in postgame news conferences for the University of Wisconsin football coach when times were good no matter how much eye-rolling it caused.
Yet Bielema has kept that one in his back pocket since the Badgers opened Big Ten Conference play in late September, even though it’s been more appropriate than ever throughout a six-game stretch in which UW has lost five games.
Here is the first thing Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema publicly said Saturday after the Badgers were beaten, 25-24, by Michigan State:
“I told our guys that for whatever reason we’re being tested in the most extreme form.”
Here is the first thing he should have said:
“I apologize to our players and our fans, but mostly to our players, for letting them down. It was totally irresponsible of me to draw a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. A team takes its personality from the head coach. I lost my composure and from then on the momentum swung to the point that we lost an 11-point lead and the game. A head coach is responsible for everything and I take responsibility for this loss.”
The last team to beat the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team in a pre-season game was the Russian National Team, way back in 1992.
Could Augustana College of Sioux Falls, S.D., pull off an upset and end the Badgers’ 31-game exhibition victory streak at the Kohl Center on Saturday night?
Nyet.
Couples ruled the night at Freakfest on Saturday.
There were the monk and nun dancing lasciviously to the Blueheels’ sticky, thick beat of rock ‘n’ roll debauchery on the local stage. In the same crowd, former national Green Party co-chair Ben Manski played a secret service bodyguard to his Wasilla beauty queen. Out on State Street, an Ernie spotted a Bert. They ran to each other with hollers of recognition, chest-bumped each other and high-fived.
State Street was glimmering early Sunday morning, still damp from an even earlier street cleaning that took place after Freakfest ended. The street was almost empty, save for a few dog-walkers and half-costumed students walking to catch a bus or meet up with friends. Workers from city engineering drove around in trucks, picking up the stacked orange barrels that were the only sign that Saturday night was different from any other weekend in Madison.
….While city workers had State Street sparkling by 8 a.m., some students began a cleanup of nearby streets later in the morning. Michael Lasecki, a junior at UW-Madison, helped organize a campus clean-up effort with the Wisconsin Union Directorate. WUD works with the city streets department on this cleanup, leaving trash bags in designated spots for pickup, but Lasecki added it’s important that students are involved in the event cleanup directly.
Freakfest has achieved a “hat trick” of three consecutive years of increased attendance and decreased arrests, Madison police announced early Sunday morning.
More than 38,300 people bought tickets to see O.A.R. and other bands at the event, comparing favorably to the 34,000 tickets sold in 2007, and the crowd overall was “good-natured, responsible and well behaved,” police said in a statement.
Despite a few fights, arrests were down considerably from 2007, with only 77 arrested as of 2:45 a.m. Sunday compared to 181 in 2007, 235 in 2006, and 566 in 2005, the year before Freakfest began.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
One by one, many of the goals established in August by the University of Wisconsin players have come off the board, figuratively speaking.
The stunning 25-24 loss to Michigan State on Saturday assured that UW will finish below the .500 mark in Big Ten play for the first time since the 2002 season.
A wind plant only gets energy when the wind blows. A solar panel only absorbs energy when the sun shines.
A nuclear power plant, though, runs nearly all the time.
That gives nuclear power the highest operating rate and is one of the reasons it’s undergoing a renaissance.
In a world concerned about global warming, nuclear power is cleaner than gas or coal, and much safer than it was in 1979 at the time of the Three Mile Island accident, said John J. Hirt, who is seeking an MBA in finance and is participating in the University of Wisconsin-Madison business school’s Applied Security Analysis Program.
It’s repeated so often that it passes for fact: European immigrants from the old days quickly learned English to blend into American life.
These days, the rest of that conversation can go something like this: Why do you Spanish-speaking newcomers refuse to do the same?
Don’t believe it, says Joe Salmons, a professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures.
Quoted: Donald Downs, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and First Amendment expert.
Quoted: Ken Goldstein, the UW-Madison political scientist who oversees the Wisconsin Advertising Project.
The Milwaukee School of Engineering next fall will launch a degree program in biomolecular engineering – the first bachelor’s program of its kind in Wisconsin – thanks to a $6 million gift from philanthropists Robert and Patricia Kern and their daughters.
John McCain won’t win every single undecided. Over the past 24 hours, two of the nation’s most respected pollsters–Andy Kohut of Pew and Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin–conducted extensive analyses of the latest polling data and came to the same conclusion: that Obama and McCain will roughly split the five to six percent of the electorate that remains uncommitted.
Some University of Wisconsin-Madison students are planning an unsanctioned Halloween block party Saturday night on West Mifflin Street, promoting the gathering as a free alternative to the Freakfest event on State Street.
“We all love the Mifflin Street block party, so we’re just letting people know that we think it would be a great place to hang out and party on Saturday, instead of everyone going to State Street,” said Xiyang Chen, a UW-Madison student who is trying to spread the word about the event. “I’ve been to Freakfest two times, and it’s pretty regulated and very well-organized, and many people find it enjoyable.
“But there are certain things some of us don’t like about Freakfest — mostly the $7 admission fee and the entertainment.”
A former Madison man who dealt hundreds of pounds of marijuana and who authorities believe has information about the unsolved Amos Mortier murder was sentenced Wednesday in federal court to two years and three months in prison and four years probation and fined $3,000.
Brian Hutchinson, 34, now of Fontana, Wis., was a University of Wisconsin student in August 2000 when he shared a house on Wingra Avenue with Reed Rogala, a man heavily involved in marijuana trafficking, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Graber.
The house served as transfer point for the 100-pound shipments of marijuana that regularly arrived from suppliers in New York.
To help mark its 150th anniversary, the F. Dohmen Co. Foundation is contributing $500,000 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Pharmacy for scholarships and $250,000 to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
The F. Dohmen Co. was founded in 1858 as a pharmacy wholesale business in Milwaukee by Frederick Dohmen and is now in its fifth generation as a family-owned business.
At just the time when students and their families might need some relief from rising college costs — they’re not getting it.
According to new figures out today, those costs jumped 6.4% this fall.
For the current academic year, the average list price of tuition and fees at 4-year public universities rose by nearly $400 to just under $6,600. At private colleges prices rose 5.9%, to more than $25,000.
WHITEWATER, Wis. (AP) — A 22-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is being treated for a probable case of the pneumonia-like Legionnaire’s disease.
….Walworth County health officer Pat Grove said the campus was alerted to watch out for possible cases of the disease, which can range from mild to fatal. Grove said the student’s case has not been confirmed by additional testing.
Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Robert Booth Fowler
As the Nov. 6 opening of “The Greeks” at Madison Repertory Theatre quickly approaches, all of the third-year Masters of Fine Arts acting students at UW-Madison are polishing lines and working on stage blocking.
All, that is, except for Katheryn Bilbo. Last year, Bilbo accepted a role at the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre in “Rabbit Hole,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire.
About half of the classrooms participating in the state’s school class-size reduction program in 2006-’07 exceeded its 15-student limit at least part of the school day, according to a recent report.
Dwindling resources and enrollment fluctuations were the main reasons given for the variation, according to the report by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
High School freshmen surpassed last year’s class when it comes to signing up for a guaranteed spot in Wisconsin colleges or universities and possibly financial benefits to boot.
Last year just more than 17,000 freshmen in Wisconsin high schools signed up for the Wisconsin Covenant, a plan by Gov. Jim Doyle to make college available for Wisconsin students, regardless of their economic background.
This year, 18,200 freshman took advantage of the program, although some of its specifics and a method of funding for the proposal has not been worked out. The program started with last year’s freshman class and will not be fully implemented until that class is ready for college.
With the presidential election less than a week away, The Capital Times’ higher education reporter, Todd Finkelmeyer, tracked down political experts from UW-Madison and Madison Area Technical College to get their take on how things might shake out on Nov. 4.
Quoted: Barry Burden, John Coleman, Kathy Cramer Walsh and Dietram Scheufele
Barack Obama retains a solid lead in Wisconsin, but it is less overwhelming than a week ago. A new Strategic Vision poll of 800 Wisconsin voters has the Democrat at 50 percent and Republican John McCain at 41 percent.
….Members of the rock band WILCO are not coming to the UW-Madison campus this weekend for fun. Nationally, the Obama campaign is concerned that young voters are not rushing to the polls in the numbers they had expected. There are concerns that this could lead to exceptionally long lines at polling places on Tuesday.
So the campaign is making a major push to get students to vote early.
The last time Halloween fell on a Friday was in 2003, and by the time that weekend was over, thousands of late-night revelers had turned State Street into a mob scene, downtown business windows were smashed, and police broke out pepper spray to tame the drunken, costumed crowd.
The good news for Madison this year: This isn’t Halloween anymore. This is Freakfest.
Wilco will be performing this Saturday, Nov. 1, at the Wisconsin Union Theater on the UW-Madison campus as part of a “Campaign for Change” event geared to get voters to the polls early.
Senator Russ Feingold and congresswoman Tammy Baldwin will speak at the event — scheduled to start at noon — before a performance from the stripped-down version of the Chicago alt-country band (Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt and Pat Sansone).
After the concert, Baldwin will lead the audience in a march to the City County Building so that voters can cast early votes before the polls close at 3:00 p.m.
Psst. Halloween is kind of a big deal in Madison. But that’s just between you, me and the tens of thousands of people who will be turning out downtown this weekend as Sarah Palins and sexy devils.
After years of putting up with a boozy, tear gas-laced freak-out every Halloween on State Street, city officials finally put the clamp down in 2006. They fenced it off, gave the event the cute name Freakfest, booked musical acts and started charging admission. Now it’s a well-organized freak-out, brought to you by Mountain Dew.
It took 25 police officers to quell a disturbance and clear out the bar at the Madison Avenue Bar, 624 University Ave., according to police reports.
The initial officers were sent to the bar to assist a woman who was drunk and unconscious.
While students at most colleges and universities in Wisconsin will have to find time between classes to cast ballots Nov. 4, those at the 2,700-student Alverno College in Milwaukee get the day off to vote and get involved in the political process.
It’s a first for the women’s college, which appears to be the only college in Wisconsin, and one of few in the nation, to make election day a holiday.
More students took the Graduate Record Examinations in September than in any month in the last eight years, Educational Testing Service spokesman Mark McNutt said.
The increase in grad school interest comes as students are finding it harder to pay their high debt burdens.
Quarterback Dustin Sherer isn’t heartless, but he is realistic and pragmatic.
So although he sympathizes with senior tight end Travis Beckum, whose season ended last week because of a broken fibula, Sherer understands the University of Wisconsin offense can’t be allowed to founder because of the loss of one player, no matter how talented or vital.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s injured star tight end Travis Beckum should be able to run by January and prepare for NFL tryouts.
That’s according to Wisconsin Coach Bret Bielema.
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and a Marquette University researcher are winners of three grants totaling $70,000 from the Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation.
The three women will be honored at a luncheon on Tuesday at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee.
Trick-or-treating with the Greeks doesn’t mean a toga party. But if kids wear the traditional party-going garb to the sorority and fraternity houses opening their doors for after-school program kids on Wednesday, they’ll probably get extra candy in their pumpkins.
The annual Halloween event Trick or Treat with the Greeks will bring about 300 kids on campus from 2 to 6 p.m., with the kids decorating cookies, painting pumpkins and touring haunted houses in the row of frat and sorority houses on Langdon Street.
The results of the Big Ten Battleground Poll are astonishing too.
The survey of between 562 to 586 registered voters in the eight states that are home to the 11 universities in the Big Ten conference was this week, from Sunday to Wednesday.
In each state, Mr. Obama holds a double-digit lead. The poll was conducted by University of Wisconsin political scientists Charles Franklin and Ken Golstein.
If you believe the pollsters, the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team will be a factor in the Big Ten race this season but finish behind Purdue and Michigan State in the conference standings.
The Badgers finished third behind the Boilermakers and Spartans in the Big Ten’s preseason poll released Sunday. The poll ranked only three teams.
The Badgers snapped a four-game losing streak with a 27-17 Big Ten Conference victory over favored Illinois on Saturday.
