Author: jnweaver

Dear Editor: When it comes to cracking down, spraying down or beating down some defenseless 19-year-old at Freakfest in order to protect the plate-glass windows on State Street, Madison’s “thin blue line” proves fit and robust.

….On campus, the dean of students remains obsessed with removing the UW from Playboy’s list of party schools or tracking down freshmen pranksters, while virtually ignoring serious attacks. A young student is kidnapped and raped within shouting distance of Bascom Hall, and the University Police announce on their Web site that the “crime of the month” involves a couple of kids stealing some banner.

They say that no increased patrols are necessary and return to sniffing at dorm room doors to nab pot smokers. I’m just waiting for them to blame students for stumbling out of the library in a stupor from studying so late at night.

City Council President Austin King is highlighting a serious issue with regard to the spring elections in Madison.

Spring break for students on the University of Wisconsin campus runs March 31 to April 8. If the past is prologue, the vast majority of students will head out of town. The spring election falls on April 3.

….The UW should work with the city to implement a major absentee voting program, which will ensure that every student who wants to exercise his or her citizenship rights is able to do so.

It’s dinnertime at the house at 140 W. Gilman St., where people troop into the dining room to serve themselves from giant pots of sticky rice and veggies in some sort of yellow sauce. No one seems quite sure what they are eating, but that does not stop them from filling their plates.

As more people arrive, the conversations and laughter become almost deafening.

….Housing co-ops can be traced back to the 1800s, but many in Madison originated during the 1960s and ’70s, when students and community members sought greater control over their living situations.

When Lauren Woods entered the race for Madison’s City Council on Friday, she changed the complexion of this spring’s contests – literally.

….Woods is the first person to jump into the race to replace Austin King, who has represented the 8th District in downtown Madison since 2003. He announced Friday morning that he would not seek re-election.

By that time, Woods, a University of Wisconsin-Madison senior and former president of the Wisconsin Black Student Union, had filed all the necessary paperwork.

Even after being confronted by Madison Police Detective Al Rickey with the fact his DNA had been found on two rape victims, Antonio Pope was defiant with investigators.

“You gotta see my face to say I raped somebody,” Pope, 31, a man with a long criminal record, reportedly insisted.

But later, according to a criminal complaint filed against him Tuesday, “he hung his head and cried intermittently,” then acknowledged that he had raped both women after kidnapping them as they were walking in the campus area, one on Nov. 29, the other on Dec. 9.