Reporters didn’t see all of Michael Flowers’ first practice with the University of Wisconsin basketball team since he took a leave of absence two weeks ago, but in the part they did see it was business as usual for the senior guard.
House Republican Tom Petri of Fond du Lac, long an advocate of reforming a federal student-loan program, introduced a bill Wednesday that he says would cut costs to taxpayers and let students reap the benefits.
At issue is whats called the Federal Family Education Loan Program. It lets private lenders make student loans at interest rates determined by a formula set by the government. In the end, the return to lenders is generous while the government guarantees almost all loans, relieving lenders of most risk, Petri said.
For almost 50 years, he was arguably the most famous artist working in Madison.
His work had been featured in Life magazine, and from 1948 until 1972, he was the University of Wisconsin artist-in-residence who succeeded the legendary regionalist John Steuart Curry.
After he died in 1992, painter Aaron Bohrod fell into relative obscurity.
With provocative names like “Major Flirt” and “Miss Behaved,” skimpy costumes for girls are becoming the norm in the aisles of Halloween stores.
These two costumes — an army major in a short camouflage dress, and a convict in a striped dress with jeweled pink handcuffs — are among many Halloween outfits available to girls as young as age 4.
Quoted: UW-Madison sociology professor Myra Marx Ferree
Dear Editor: I am a native of Madison and have been intimately involved with Halloween the last few years as executive director of Downtown Madison Inc. I am proud to say that the changes that have taken place with Halloween on State Street really worked to turn the event around.
There’s nothing like Wisconsin sports to unite even political rivals.
A Democratic state senator and Republican state representative from the Green Bay area are teaming up to find a solution to the blackouts on Packer and Badger games being experienced by sports fans across the state.
“There is no reason that all Wisconsin fans should not be able to see the Wisconsin-Ohio State game or the Packers-Cowboys game in November,” Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, said in a news release.
INDIANAPOLIS — Nearly every main demographic group of top college athletes exceeds the graduation rate for its student-body counterparts.
According to federal graduation rates released Tuesday by the NCAA, 63 percent of Division I scholarship athletes who started college as freshmen in 2000 graduated in six years. That beats the graduation rate for all students at Division I schools by 1 percent and equaled last year’s percentage.
At the University of Wisconsin, scholarship athletes (76 percent) graduated at essentially the same rate as the student body (78 percent) in that six-year period.
A legislative proposal to solve the stalemate between the state’s two biggest cable companies and the NFL Network and Big Ten Network is nothing more than political grandstanding, said a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who follows cable issues closely.
“The state can’t force its way into a negotiation between two private companies,” said Professor Barry Orton, who advises many communities in their dealings with cable companies. “This bill would have zero impact. It’s just a chance for legislators to look like they care about their constituents.”
Barring dramatic improvement in his bruised left leg during the next few days, tailback P.J. Hill probably wont be healthy enough to play Saturday when the University of Wisconsin faces top-ranked Ohio State.
Freakfest became Ticketfest and Arrestfest for fewer partiers this year than the past two years, according to statistics released today by the Madison Police Department.
Friday and Saturday arrest and citation numbers show 181 people were arrested on a variety of charges, including three felonies and nine criminal misdemeanors. Police also handed out tickets for a total of 247 municipal ordinance violations. Some revelers were arrested for multiple violations.
Lance Smith’s five-game, university-imposed suspension will not be modified, meaning the sophomore tailback will miss Wisconsin’s final two regular-season road games.
That was the message delivered Monday by University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema.
“I’ve been basically in discussions with different university personnel,” Bielema explained during his weekly news conference, “and I’ve been told to remain quiet about the issue so I’ll remain quiet.”
….The Big Ten Network wants to be on Charter’s expanded basic service while the cable company wants the Big Ten Network on a sports tier. Who’s right? Who knows?
What I do know is that there is no good guy in this particular dispute. The Big Ten Network is a naked money grab by the conference schools, which have already shown themselves to be utterly shameless in finding ingenious new ways to bilk lifelong season ticket holders. Charter is not the good guy, either, because it is a cable company and as sure as a bird flies or a fish swims, the cable company is not the good guy. But cheers to the Big Ten Network for — almost — making Charter appear sympathetic.
As Wisconsin looks for ways to meet its growing demand for cleaner energy, the state can no longer afford to rule out the construction of nuclear power plants. The 23-year-old moratorium on new nuclear plants needs to be lifted now. A column by Michael Corradini, chair of Engineering Physics and Wisconsin Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
With this weekend’s University of Wisconsin football game only televised on the Big Ten Network, it’s safe to say many Madison residents are pretty upset.
“It’s hard to find any words to say about it that aren’t expletives,” Justin Hoelscher said.
It’s not the first time a Badgers game has been on the new cable channel that is not offered through Charter Communications, but more people are taking notice due to the magnitude of this match-up.
Marquette University’s College of Engineering has received a $15 million gift from Generac Power Systems Inc. founder Robert Kern and his wife, Patricia, to help pay for a new building, college officials announced Monday.
Gary Gorman never intended to start a company focused on historic preservation development.
During law school, Gorman got a job at the old state Commissioner of Securities office reviewing offering memoranda for real estate deals.
So when he joined a law firm after graduating, he ended up representing developers and syndicators who were raising capital from investors to do their deals.
IT IS Friday morning and you are here, at this nice window table in the Memorial Union overlooking the lake, to talk to Tom Detienne about today’s UW Homecoming football game. But there’s a problem. His stories keep getting in the way.
I have said and written many times that dollar for dollar, no place in town gives you more great music in more great performances than the University of Wisconsin School of Music’s Faculty Concert Series.
….The UW Transportation Services – what a euphemism – seems to be doing its best to screw things up and make me revise my view.
The Halloween weekend has for many years thrown a scare into Madison. It is not that this city is frightened by the prospect of a big party. Quite the opposite. The problem was that the fun nature of the festivities on State Street was warped by a handful of rowdies who did not know how to have a good time.
Christie Penn, campus relations chair for Associated Students of Madison, is among those who says that Freakfest went great. She was leaving the annual Halloween party on State Street just before bar time, stopping at Ian’s Pizza before heading home.
ASM collaborated with the city of Madison’s Central Business Improvement District (BID) board and Frank Productions to manage the Isthmus stage at Peace Park, which hosted a costume contest and the winner of an ASM-sponsored battle of the bands contest.
Cold can kill. It can even kill cancer.
Paul Spankowski of Reedsburg is very grateful for that.
“It saved my life,” said Spankowski, 56, who owns Good Earth Gardens with his wife, Martha Burton, and sells products regularly at the Farmers’ Market in Madison.
If the No. 1 team in the country falls in Columbus, and almost nobody in Madison can see it, did it really happen?
That’s the potential scenario Saturday when the Big Ten Network televises the football showdown between the University of Wisconsin and top-ranked and undefeated Ohio State at 11 a.m. UW is 21st in the BCS rankings.
BTN is available on satellite TV services DirecTV and DISH Network, but not Madison area cable provider Charter Communications, making the game a virtual blackout in the Madison area and forcing Charter customers to find a friend or a bar with satellite TV in order to see the game.
Madison police set up barricades — with barrels, fencing, their presence and horses — closing off each block of State Street and making revelers leave the street block by block through side streets early Sunday to bring the city’s annual Halloween party to a peaceful conclusion.
The University of Wisconsin-Madisons School of Business has received an $85 million gift from a group of 13 alumni – the biggest single gift in UW-Madisons history – to add faculty, boost the schools reputation and improve teaching and research, but not to change its name anytime soon.
Even the ardent University of Wisconsin football fan probably doesn’t remember the name Chris Kennedy.
And that’s understandable, because his favorite catch at Camp Randall Stadium came after he graduated, on a pass from Burt Reynolds while playing a role in an instructional film — an exchange that foreshadowed a career in the entertainment industry for the former walk-on from Waunakee.
But Kennedy remembers a lot about UW football. And, sparked by his attendance at the 10-year reunion of the school’s first Rose Bowl championship team, he sought to record those memories in a manner that would be cathartic for himself, instructive for fans and serve as a road map of sorts for anyone weighing a future in Division I football — particularly those kids who might not be scholarship material.
Students at UW-Madison received nearly $569,000 in scholarships this year courtesy of local chapters and affiliates of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
For the 2007-08 academic year, 352 students from 77 cities in Wisconsin and 25 other states received WAA scholarships, ranging from $200 to $8,000 for a school year.
Jesus Salas, a member of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents since 2003, resigned today to protest the lack of a state budget provision for tuition aid for the children of undocumented workers.
The resignation came just before Gov. Jim Doyle signed the 2007-09 budget into law this morning. Salas blamed Doyle for not pushing harder to keep the student tuition remission provision in the budget, calling the failure “intolerable.”
There is nothing wrong with the decision of Associated Students of Madison, the University of Wisconsin’s student government, to fund only groups that are student-led. But that does not mean that the UW should lose sight of the value to the university community of groups such as the Tenant Resource Center and the Rape Crisis Center.
More than three months behind schedule, Gov. Jim Doyle signed the second-latest budget in state history today in a ceremony at the Memorial Union.
In part because of his active involvement in negotiating the final budget deal, Doyle used his veto pen the most sparingly of any governor in more than 35 years — only 33 times in the 1,500-plus-page budget bill.
….For more than a decade, the Wisconsin Republican Party has pursued an anti-education campaign, starving one of the best public school systems in the country through revenue caps and making the great University of Wisconsin dead last among its peers in faculty salaries.
The latter has resulted in a tripling of outside offers to top UW faculty over the past three years and a halving of retention rates. As many of the state’s top researchers and intellectual entrepreneurs leave Madison, the UW, the city and the state will be much poorer.
Dear Editor: Thank you for the recent article exploring the economic impact of the Halloween Freakfest event.
The article mentioned a downtown Madison market analysis study by the UW-Extension suggesting that Halloween does not bring in as much revenue for downtown businesses as do other events. However, the article reported that the data came only from downtown bars. Rather, the data came from a comprehensive survey of retail, service, restaurant and entertainment businesses — from clothing boutiques to shoe stores, gift shops, galleries, cafes, restaurants, banks, salons, pharmacies, specialty food shops, and arts and entertainment organizations.
Madison Area Technical College — MATC to most of us — is going great guns, now serving more than 43,000 students at its seven campuses and turning out graduates in many of today’s high-tech skills. Ninety percent of them take jobs right here at home.
But the school’s president, Bettsey Barhorst, is still perplexed that more area high school grads who can’t get into the University of Wisconsin-Madison as freshmen aren’t taking advantage of a new program that allows them to get a two-year liberal arts associate degree at MATC and then guarantees them admission to the UW-Madison for their junior and senior years.
The Library Mall will lose a favorite spot for Thai cuisine on Friday when the SukhoThai food cart closes its window and rolls away.
Fans of the restaurant’s curries and pad Thai could get their fix at the food cart after the Regent Street restaurant closed in April, but as of Friday, the cart is shutting down for good.
Michael Eric Dyson, perhaps the world’s leading authority on hip-hop music, says that hip-hop culture is under assault in America.
“It is said to be the cause of all manner of evil in society and is blamed for rising rates of homicide in certain cities,” Dyson told an audience of about 700 Wednesday night during his Distinguished Lecture Series talk at the Union Theater.
Madison may, for the first time in 22 months, have a city treasurer before Christmas if Mayor Dave Cieslewicz gets his way.
Dipping into Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration for the second time this month to fill a city position, Cieslewicz named Gerald Pacer, currently Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Revenue, as city treasurer Wednesday.
A battle is brewing along Old University Avenue, where one of Madison’s leading real estate families is pushing the envelope on tall buildings in an established neighborhood.
The Mullins Development Group is pursuing a high-rise apartment complex at Campus Drive and Highland Avenue, across from the Best Western Inntowner hotel. It would be aimed at professionals, students and staff at the nearby hospitals, potentially including a future transit station for trains or buses.
A day after passing one of the state’s hardest-fought budget bills, Senate Democrats today ousted their leader, Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson of Beloit, who helped negotiate the final deal, and replaced her with veteran Sen. Russ Decker of Schofield.
The news came when Decker, the co-chairman of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, emerged from a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats that lasted for about three hours.
IT’S LIKELY that any number of master’s candidates on the UW-Madison campus have come out of the oral defense of their thesis feeling like punching somebody.
Unlike most, however, Paul Georgieff knows he’s going to punch somebody. He’ll kick them, too. Maybe he’ll even throw them to the ground and jump on them.
And he’ll do it on national television.
Illegal immigrants are hoping that the proposed Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act – commonly called the DREAM Act – introduced by U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and supported by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) will pass.
To qualify, a person would have to be here at least five years and would have had to come to the U.S. by age 16. The person would have to graduate from high school, be of good moral character and not have committed any crimes. The age limit is 30.
University of Wisconsin reserve tailback Lance Smith pleaded guilty Tuesday to misdemeanor charges of battery and disorderly conduct and has been referred to Dane County’s first offender program, according to assistant district attorney Christopher Freeman.
The price of college in Wisconsin rose faster than the inflation rate this year but just about kept pace with the national tuition average, increasing about 6% at four-year public and private schools and about 4% at public two-year institutions.
The Legislature passed a long-overdue budget late Tuesday, even as lawmakers discovered new provisions – including one allowing grocery stores to serve customers free samples of hard liquor.
The little-noticed tidbit in the budget would allow grocers and liquor stores to serve up to 1 1/2 ounces of whiskey, gin and other liquors to customers each visit. The budget, 115 days overdue, was the second-latest spending plan the Legislature ever adopted.
Electric companies all across the U.S. are scrapping plans for new coal-fired power plants — but not in Wisconsin where coal remains king.
At least 16 coal-fired power plant proposals nationwide have been ditched in recent months and another three dozen are facing delays as utilities face growing concerns over global climate change coupled with soaring construction costs.
LATER, AFTER the bombs and all the carnage, when her country’s triumphant celebration had gone terribly wrong, what Amna Buttar would remember most were the looks on the faces of Benazir Bhutto’s teenage daughters hours earlier when they told their mother goodbye at the airport in Dubai.
….Buttar was on the plane with the former prime minister that flew from Dubai to Karachi, Pakistan last Thursday, and — for a time — in the parade that ended when a suicide bomber set off explosives that killed 134 and injured around 500.
Buttar, until recently a physician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School, had been asked by Bhutto to accompany her on her historic return to Pakistan last week after eight years in exile.
It was already implied, but University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez is making it official: Ron Dayne’s number will be retired.
Pricey campaign contributions by college students raise red flags about potentially illegal giving, says the head of a state watchdog group.
A Wisconsin Democracy Campaign analysis released Monday shows that 177 contributors identified as “student” in campaign finance reports gave $86,243 to candidates for statewide office and the Legislature from 2002 through June 2007. Of those, 31 contributed $1,000 or more.
“The typical money struggles people associate with college students certainly did not appear to be a problem for many of these 177 student contributors,” the group said in a news release, and Executive Director Mike McCabe said in a telephone interview that “I think the kids and their parents have some explaining to do. The circumstances around these donations is clearly curious.”
Members of the UW-Madison Athletic Board have voted to prohibit themselves — and top UW officials — from sports wagering.
The athletic department staff and student athletes were already barred from wagering, but the amended policy extends the betting ban to the board and university officials, such as Chancellor John Wiley, who have responsibilities over the athletic department.
The new University of Wisconsin-Madison policy, approved unanimously last week, is in accord with revised NCAA rules.
The University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Public Broadcasting, and the city of Madison are all big winners in the final state budget package that comes up for approval by state lawmakers today.
Each of those entities had been targeted for major cuts by Assembly Republicans, but their funds were restored as part of the negotiations between Senate Democrats, Assembly Republicans, and Gov. Jim Doyle.
Assembly Republicans had targeted the University of Wisconsin for more than $95 million in cuts; all but $25 million of that amount has been restored.
The attorney for Wisconsin junior cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu suffered another loss Monday in court.
A judge in Sycamore, Ill., ruled that all statements Ikegwuonu made to police in DeKalb, Ill., the night of his arrest in November 2006 are admissible, according to assistant state attorney Stephanie Klein.
Story also notes that Ron Dayne’s No. 33 will be retired in a ceremony at the Michigan game on Nov. 10.
Property taxes would rise $80 – or by 2.9% – on the typical home in December under the state budget lawmakers are expected to adopt today, documents released Monday show. Here is a summary of budget provisions, prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
As a veterinarian that trained at the University of Wisconsin, I found the Frankie Trull’s op-ed column supporting animal research misleading and disingenuous.
For centuries people have opposed the use of animals in scientific research based on ethics. Their argument was that any animal close enough to us to be of value in research was close enough to be valued for itself; an end in and of itself, not a means to an end, to paraphrase Kant.
No one’s calling it a crisis yet, but Madison’s major arts organizations have been caught off guard by slower than expected season openings.
Possible reasons for the lower attendance range from competing sports and music events to bad programming to unknown performers. The overall economy also may be playing a role.
But most of the arts presenters simply said they are perplexed.
When inspired choreography, dancing and music come together, they grab hold of an audience and don’t let go.
All three elements meshed on Thursday night as a packed house at UW-Madison’s Lathrop Hall basked in 90 minutes of “Concert 10” by Jin-Wen Yu Dance. The evening could have gone on longer, and the viewer’s mind was so entranced it rarely wandered beyond the stage.
….The theater-of-the-absurd character of the budget debate has caused most Wisconsinites to lose interest in the details of a document so long delayed that the average citizen’s response has been to scream: “Just finish it!”
Now that the final resolution is within reach, however, it is necessary to ask the fundamental questions:
1. Is this a worthy budget for Wisconsin?
2. If so, should legislators vote to approve it this week?
The answer to both questions is “yes,” but just barely.
Trevon Hughes knew fellow point guard and workout mate Michael Flowers wasn’t with the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team Friday but he still had to do a double-take of his surroundings to make sure.
“Everything we did, practice, running the hill, it was always us two. I feel like he’s right beside me right now. It’s weird without him,” said Hughes of Flowers, a senior with the Badgers who took a temporary leave of absence Thursday for unspecified medical reasons.
“But we know he’ll be back,” Hughes added. “He’s just taking a little time off. He’s taking a step back so he can take two steps forward.”
After more than three months of delay and countless hours of closed-door negotiations, Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders announced Friday they have a final deal on a new state budget.
“For the first time in a long time, Wisconsin has a budget,” said Doyle, who was flanked by top Democratic and Republican leaders during a press conference Friday night.
Another square-shouldered architectural mass will rise on the UW-Madison campus, a quietly imposing presence to protect the vast riches of the Chazen Museum of Art.
Rodolfo Machado’s design for the museum’s expansion, unveiled Thursday, is also meant to present and illuminate. Yet the facade’s stern simplicity hides an elegant array of subtle solutions to the challenge of doubling the size of the original fortress-like design by Chicago architect Harry Weiss.
Average tuition and fees at four-year public colleges rose 6.6 percent this year, again outstripping increases in financial aid and pushing students into more borrowing. Community colleges once again did the best job keeping the lid on prices.
In-state students at four-year public schools are paying $6,185 this year, up $381 from last year, according to the nonprofit College Board’s annual survey of college costs, released today. At four-year private colleges, tuition and fees rose 6.3 percent to $23,712.
Public and private colleges in Wisconsin rose at lower rates than the national average, though the UW-Madison was slightly higher.
When University of Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan decided to give Morris Cain a scholarship this year, it had to be because of efforts like the one the junior from Nicolet High School displayed Sunday.
The 6-foot-5 forward, who had walk-on status his first two years in the program, brought a load of energy and production in the Badgers’ annual Red-White Scrimmage, finishing with 16 points, seven rebounds and three assists. He made six of seven shots and hit a free throw with 1.1 seconds left that allowed his Red team to salvage an unofficial 85-85 tie with the White team.
No one can deny that the University of Wisconsin will face a more demanding challenge than a young Northern Illinois team provided Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium.
