The news that senior tight end Travis Beckum has played his final game for the University of Wisconsin hit teammate and friend DeAndre Levy hard.
“I kind of shook my head and just couldn’t really believe it,” said the senior linebacker, who learned Beckum’s fate Sunday morning from strong safety Jay Valai. “I couldn’t fathom or imagine being in his shoes.
“We’re here behind him and wish him all the best through it.”
MADISON, Wis. — A herd of UW law school grads took over Camp Randall right before Saturday’s Homecoming game against Illinois.
The Homecoming tradition calls for all law school graduates to run across the field, toss a cane over the north goalposts, and catch it. Legend has it that law students who catch their cane will win their first case.
Among Saturday’s cane throwers was Johnny Walsh, who conquered many obstacles, not the least of which is being legally blind, to get to the big day.
CONWAY, Ark. (AP) — Police officers patrolled the University of Central Arkansas campus Monday and classes were canceled after a shooting in an alleyway left two students dead and a third person wounded.
Shots were fired in the heart of the campus Sunday night near a male dormitory and behind the campus police station. No arrests had been made by 7 a.m. Monday.
“This is just an awful tragedy. It’s the worst thing that can happen on a college campus,” interim university president Tom Courtway said. “We have start looking at everything.”
CHICAGO — The University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team is on the “Change” bandwagon. It’s just not polling as well for them as it is for Barack Obama.
While Obama’s change message has helped him open up a big lead in the political polls, the Badgers’ change platform fizzled in the Big Ten preseason polls.
Wisconsin was picked to finish 10th in the 11-team Big Ten by both the coaches and the media in their annual polls. To outsiders, change means no Jolene Anderson and no Janese Banks. But to those in the program, change is a good thing.
Although polls are showing Barack Obama with a double-digit lead in Wisconsin over John McCain, state Democrats are taking nothing for granted.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, is launching a two-day, eight-college tour Monday to urge students to vote early and get involved in the final days of the campaign.
After a spike in arrests at two night games, University of Wisconsin-Madison arrested 14 people, 10 of them students, at Camp Randall on Saturday during the Badgers’ 27-17 victory over Illinois at UW’s homecoming day game.
Forty-three people were ejected from the stadium, 20 of them students, University Police reported.
Alcohol use was involved in 38 of the ejections, including 12 instances in which a citation was issued for underage use of alcohol. Two other citations were issued: one each for possession of marijuana and trespassing.
Faculty and staff at UW-Madison will be rolling up their sleeves for flu shots in November, with the university setting a goal of immunizing 5,000 workers.
Flu shot clinics for UW employees will begin Nov. 3 and continue through Nov. 14 at a dozen campus locations.
The shots are administered at no charge for employees presenting their health insurance cards, but will cost $28 if no card is presented.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin outlined some goals and priorities she believes are important to the future success and health of the university during a 45-minute speech Thursday night at the Kohl Center.
Martin, who replaced John Wiley as chancellor on Sept. 1, spoke to a crowd of about 2,000 during an event titled “On, Wisconsin! A Great University and its Friends Welcome Chancellor Martin.”
First, Martin said it’s vitally important to make UW-Madison affordable for students of all economic backgrounds. That, however, does not mean she plans to slash tuition — or even keep the price of attending the UW flat.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has carved out a healthy lead across a Midwest region that was fiercely competitive a month ago, according to an eight-state Big Ten Battleground Poll released Thursday.
Quoted: barry Burden, UW-Madison political scientist.
Downtown workers might want to leave work a little early Friday for one of two reasons, either to avoid the congestion caused by the UW-Madison homecoming parade or to find a good viewing spot for the parade that begins at 5 p.m.
Zou Zou Robidoux loves classical music and is not ashamed to talk about it.
“I’m a geek about it,” said the 16-year-old Robidoux, who began playing in fourth grade. “It’s 90 percent of the music I listen to.”
Quoted: School of Music admissions coordinator Bonnie Abrams and graduate student Morgann Davis
Officials from St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison will pick up a very special award at the end of the week at the National Collaborative meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
All of the hospital’s patients who are eligible to become organ donors signed up this year for the donor program, and the hospital will receive a medal of honor Friday for its effort.
St. Mary’s is part of the University of Wisconsin Health Organ Procurement Organization and the average sign-up rate in the UW service area is 87 percent for organ donations, while the national average is just 70.7 percent.
Quoted: Dr. Tony D’Allesandro, medical director of the UW Health OPO
If the Big Ten battleground states are any indication how the presidential election will go, Sen. Barack Obama will handily defeat Sen. John McCain in the race for the White House.
The Big Ten Battleground Poll released Thursday shows Obama with significant leads in all eight states that have universities comprising the Big Ten Conference, a major shift in voter sentimentality from the first poll taken in September that had Obama leading in one state and both candidates neck and neck in the other seven states.
“Obama is clearly winning the Big Ten battleground,” said UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin, co-director of the poll. “The dominance of the economy as a top issue for voters is the overwhelming story.”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A former education dean at the University of Louisville has been indicted on charges of mishandling federal grant money.
Federal prosecutors said in a statement Wednesday that ex-dean Robert Felner is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, mail fraud, conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and income tax evasion.
A “kickoff” event on Wednesday will celebrate Madison’s hosting of the 2010 U.S. Transplant Games.
Madison will host the games July 30-Aug. 4, an event that city and business officials claim will attract national media attention and welcome visitors and dollars to the isthmus.
….More than 7,000 participants are expected to pour $2.6 million into Madison during the five-day run of the games, which will take place in various venues around the city, including the Alliant Energy Center, the Kohl Center, Monona Terrace, UW sports centers, and bowling and golf facilities.
When the University of Wisconsin athletic department started to set its 2008-09 budget about this time a year ago, officials knew they would have to adjust for the normal inflationary increases.
But they didn’t know the price of oil would skyrocket, sending travel costs upward with it.
That means UW teams are operating under budgets that didn’t take into account higher airline prices, including eye-opening cost increases for charter flights. But the message has been clear: Squeeze existing resources as best you can, because the budget is firm.
October 26, 1988. The Los Angeles Dodgers just won the World Series. Michael Dukakis is about to lose the presidential election. And in Madison, Kelly Cotter receives a bone marrow transplant from her kid brother, Adam, that she hopes will save her life. The Capital Times puts her story on the front page: “Tough hurdle for 12-year-old athlete.”
…in the 20 years since her diagnosis, she has become a leading advocate for cancer research, not just locally but nationally. In 2002, she completed her law degree at UW and became director of legislative affairs for the National Childhood Cancer Foundation. Earlier this year, she helped lobby Congress to pass the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act, which will devote $150 million to research over the next five years. UW Hospital will honor her for her work over the years at an event Monday.
Song and dance will mix with the goals and challenges of running a major university Thursday at the public’s first chance to meet and greet new UW-Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin.
Mackenzie Heinrichs is less than two months into her freshman year at UW-Madison but already is playing an active role in political protests around town.
She recently helped organize a gathering outside U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s office to protest the government’s $700 billion bill to bail out the nation’s financial services industry. Baldwin voted for the bailout. Heinrichs then made T-shirts that stated “No Money for Wall St. and War, Bailout Workers and the Poor!” and participated in another small protest Oct. 8 that disrupted Baldwin’s appearance at the Memorial Union for a panel discussion on voter issues.
Yet as active and enthusiastic as Heinrichs is herself, she’s frustrated by what she sees as a general apathy among her classmates toward important political issues — especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Quoted: Political science professor Kathy Cramer Walsh and Paul Soglin, an adjunct associate professor at the LaFollette School of Public Affairs
Near west side Ald. Robbie Webber isn’t a huge Badger football fan. So when the UW hosted Penn State in a night game at Camp Randall two weeks ago, Webber decided to spend the weekend out of town with friends.
But when Webber returned home Sunday and checked her voice mail, there was a strange call from someone asking “why do you hate local business” and another fuming “you’re a joke.”
At first, Webber thought the calls were leftovers from her support for the citywide smoking ban. Upon further review, however, it turns out they came from patrons of the Stadium Bar.
When Bo Ryan was coaching high school ball in Philadelphia, he’d suggest that his less-than-graceful players take dance classes, and inevitably some parent would call, balking at the idea of giving Arthur Murray part of his or her paycheck.
â??If you have a rich uncle somewhere, have him spring,â? Ryan would tell them. â??Give it to him for a birthday gift or something.â?
Good news for Metro bus riders downtown: Buses will be returning to Capitol Square on Sunday, Nov. 9.
Buses have been using the “loop route” a block off the square since early summer because of ongoing bus shelter construction on the four streets around the Capitol: Mifflin, Pinckney, Main and Carroll. The loop route uses Dayton, Webster, Doty and Fairchild streets.
UW-Madison homecoming events on Friday will force four Metro routes commonly using the loop route to take alternate streets away from State and Lake streets.
The second Big Ten Battleground poll leading into the presidential election Nov. 5 will be unveiled Thursday at 3 p.m. on the Big Ten Network (Channel 73 on Charter Cable).
The poll, taken of 600 voters in each of eight states representing the Big Ten Conference, is co-directed by UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin, co-developer of Pollster.com, and Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project.
Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp will deliver the keynote address at the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative’s Bioenergy Summit on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus Thursday.
Krupp’s talk, which like the entire conference is free and open to the public, will cover current energy policy, as well as innovative ways to encourage companies to adopt environmentally conscious businesses practices.
Custodians working at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who have been pressing to get the start time of the second shift changed back to 5 p.m. got their wish.
Campus officials announced Monday that the starting time for about 145 second-shift custodians will be restored on Nov. 23.
n late August, the UW implemented a 6 p.m. starting time, a move criticized by some custodians and their union.
The city has busted the Stadium Bar, the largest outdoor beer garden near Camp Randall Stadium, for staying open too late and operating its beer garden during more than just Badger football game days.
The Madison Plan Commission Monday night voted to hold a public hearing in December on the popular sports bar, at 1419 Monroe St., to assess its outdoor operations.
Quoted: John Coleman, political science department chairman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has analyzed McCainâ??s voting record using data compiled by Congressional Quarterly.
Quoted: Michael Rothschild, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison business professor who has extensively studied the issue.
Marquette University has hired a Rutgers University executive to help grow its research program, a first step toward eventually having a technology transfer office, officials said.
If they haven’t reached rock bottom, they can surely see rock bottom from their house, a veritable house of cards since the start of the Big Ten season. And the prospects are that it will get much worse before it gets any better for the beleaguered Badgers, with Illinois stepping to the plate.
Quoted: Folklorist James P. Leary, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
More than a decade after University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Stephen Ambrose set up a fund to hire a military history professor, the school may finally fulfill the late historianâ??s vision by filling the position next fall.
Quoted: UW-Madison political scientist Charles Franklin.
Connie Pesek lost her only biological child when she was a battered wife. Though her abusive ex-husband ended that pregnancy, she has nevertheless gained lots of children.
She’s been a house mother for fraternities and sororities for more than 20 years in Nebraska, Missouri and now in Madison, where she mothers the young ladies at the Delta Gamma Sorority on Langdon Street.
The former teacher started out in her rather unusual profession when she saw a Help Wanted ad and called the phone number given.
Ever wonder what those elegant sorority and fraternity street houses on and near Langdon Street look like on the inside?
Very nice indeed, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison students who live in them opened their homes to local residents on Sunday in the second annual Greek Tour of Homes.
UW-Madison students exploring political activism of today’s youth released a short documentary on Friday titled “Youthanized.”
The video, which is available at www.youtube.com/youthanized, compares activism of today’s UW students with those of the late 1960s and early 1970s — when Madison was a national hot spot for Vietnam War protestors.
The documentary, which started to take shape in the fall of 2007 as a school project for Mark Korshak, begins by posing the question, “Is Generation Y uniquely apathetic?”
During this season of open enrollment for health insurance, when state employees may re-consider their insurance options, I am writing to ask people in Madison and Dane County to consider their choices seriously.
You might think all health plans, all HMOs, all hospitals, all doctors are pretty much the same.
But you would be wrong. Perhaps even dead wrong.
(Meg Gaines is the founder and director of the nationally recognized, award-winning Center for Patient Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a clinical professor of law.0
Eastern influences are in the spotlight this weekend in a UW-Madison dance concert that melds traditional Indian, Taiwanese and Chinese movement and music.
“Refiguring A/musing” features the choreography of UW Dance Program Chairman Jin-Wen Yu, who is Taiwanese, and Indian guest artist Parul Shah, a dance professor at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, India. Yu and Shah both dance in the program, joined intermittently by two dozen UW student dancers and a handful of local residents who practice Tai Chi, a form of Chinese martial arts.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin political scientist and polling authority Charles Franklin.
The largest association of medical doctors in Wisconsin is barring its members from accepting gifts from drug companies, following a national trend to limit conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
The ban includes the most common gifts to doctors such as food, mugs and pens, as well as reimbursements for travel, the Wisconsin Medical Society said in a statement released Thursday.
“A complete ban eases the burdens of compliance, biased decision-making, and patient distrust,” reads the new policy, which was approved Saturday.
….UW professor Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, the UW project that since 1998 has undertaken research initiatives to document how candidates, political parties and special interest groups communicate with voters, says:
“Analysis from the Wisconsin Advertising Project of Sen. John McCain’s advertising for the week of September 28 to October 4 shows, in fact, that all McCain campaign advertising did have significant negative content…”
Bret Bielema hopes the University of Wisconsin’s non-conference football game against Northern Illinois in 2011 at Chicago’s Soldier Field won’t be the Badgers’ last in a pro stadium.
The coach acknowledged Thursday that he had talked to officials from the Green Bay Packers about playing a â??roadâ? game at Lambeau Field; that UW could face Washington State in Seattle rather than in Pullman, Wash.; and that he would like to see UW face Virginia Tech in Redskins Stadium.
In response to dueling claims in the presidential debate over which side has been more negative on TV, the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has weighed in with a reality check.
Man-made reservoirs are contributing to the spread of non-native species in Wisconsin lakes, a study has found.
In a comparison of natural lakes and reservoirs created by damming rivers, the reservoirs were up to 300 times more likely than lakes to harbor invasive aquatic species, according to the study published in September in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
Quoted: Professor Jake Vander Zanden of the UW-Madison Center for Limnology
Nothing, including cutting state government jobs and spending on education, will be off the table as Wisconsin deals with the national economic downturn that could put the state $3 billion in the red, Gov. Jim Doyle warned Wednesday.
….Despite the current economic turmoil, Doyle said he was optimistic the state could make it through the rest of this year without emergency action.
However, Doyle said he ordered state agencies to cut 10 percent from their proposals for the budget that will take effect July 1. That’s after he already told them to cut millions of dollars in agency spending and not expect any increases over the next two years.
Collegiate athletes are graduating at the highest rate since the NCAA began collecting data seven years ago, NCAA President Myles Brand said Tuesday.
The most recent Graduation Success Rates (GSR) show that 79% of freshmen athletes who entered college in 2001 earned their four-year degrees.
“Academic reform is alive and well on campuses nationwide,” Brand said. “Student-athletes are good students and our research shows, if you give them 10 years, which allows them to stop and come back, nine out of 10 earn college degrees.”
Marquette University, one of four Division I programs in Wisconsin, had perfect GSR scores in men’s basketball, men’s golf, men’s soccer, men’s tennis, women’s cross country and track, and women’s tennis and volleyball.
At the University of Wisconsin, men’s basketball had a GSR score of 86%, while football recorded a GSR score of 63% and men’s ice hockey had a 72% GSR. Among UW women, the basketball program had a GSR of 80%, while ice hockey had a GSR of 96%.
As odd as it might sound to say that someone with a 24-8 record needs to be scrutinized, Bret Bielema must be held accountable as all big-time, million-dollar coaches on the following grounds:
Is he in complete control of the team, and is it being coached and disciplined to its fullest? And is he recruiting to a standard befitting Wisconsin football?
Dance and theater, improvisation and structure, Europe and Japan: For Kate Corby, contemporary dance is all about blending. And no matter where the influences emerge, Corby, the newest dance professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will always “begin with and return to the body.”
The University of Wisconsin Marching Band will be allowed to perform Sunday at Lambeau Field, director Mike Leckrone said Wednesday.
Bibliophiles will be lining up for bargains starting Wednesday night during the UW-Madison fall used book sale, the largest used book sale in Wisconsin.
The sale is in Room 116 at Memorial Library, 728 State St., held in conjunction with the Wisconsin Book Festival.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Marching Band will be allowed to make a trip to Green Bay on Sunday to perform during the Packers’ game against the Indianapolis Colts at Lambeau Field.
UW-Madison made the announcement in a press release Wednesday afternoon.
Quoted: Katherine Cramer Walsh, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the author of â??Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life.â?
“Forgiveness” is not a word that has much traction in American society right now. “Anger” and “blame” and “retribution” are much more in vogue.
Wisconsin-Madison, started the International Forgiveness Institute here in 1994 to build on the pioneering social science research he had done.
The American public does not seem to be in a mood to talk about forgiveness when it comes to the economic meltdown.
….Madison has actually become a hotbed of sorts into academic research on forgiveness.
A slick Web site aimed at recruiting doctors to Wisconsin is only two days old but already advertises more than 570 openings. “It’s pretty amazing,” said George Quinn, a senior vice president with the Wisconsin Hospital Association, which helped launch the site. “This proves that we have a real shortage of physicians in this state.”
Wisconsin’s two medical schools graduate between 330 and 340 doctors each year, but only 38 percent remain in the state. For years hospitals, clinics and other health care providers have been struggling to come up with innovative ways to lure them back.
The city of Madison has been trying to boost redevelopment of the South Park Street corridor for years, including pumping more than $10 million into the blighted Villager Mall. Now, a Chicago-based real estate developer is eyeing the former Bancroft Dairy site on the corner of Fish Hatchery Road and Park Street, with thoughts of a hotel to serve visitors to the UW-Madison campus and nearby hospitals.
This was supposed to be the point of the season where the University of Wisconsin football team could have set its sights on a stretch run toward a Big Ten Conference title after navigating a difficult opening stretch in league play.
Instead, the Badgers have reached the midpoint of the regular season in dire straits. A Big Ten title is out of reach. Now, there are legitimate concerns whether the Badgers (3-3, 0-3 Big Ten), mired in a three-game losing skid, even have what it takes to clinch a bowl berth for the seventh consecutive season.
Don’t slap a horse on the rump, especially if a cop is sitting on it.
A Janesville man was arrested and tentatively charged with battery to a police animal after allegedly whacking a police horse very hard on the rump shortly after midnight early Sunday morning in the 600 block of State Street.
A man who fondled himself while following women walking down the street after the Badger football game Saturday night was arrested and tentatively charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, police said.
