After listening to the representatives of big business at a forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently, you might be led to believe that the UW System should exist for the benefit of corporations alone.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison issued a denial Friday of a sexual harassment claim by one of the three doctors at the UW fertility clinic but acknowledged tensions among the three are a problem.
The UW response by attorney John Dowling attempted to refute claims in a complaint filed with the state by Dr. Elizabeth Pritts that she was harassed by Dr. Steven Lindheim. The third doctor in the clinic is Pritts’ husband, Dr. David Olive.
Quoted: Dhavan Shah, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of journalism and mass communication.
IT WASN’T until her elderly parents died a few years ago that Arlene Rothschild was able to begin coming to terms with what happened that terrible May day in Madison 38 years ago.
“I was unable to grieve,” Rothschild said from her home in Chicago this week.
She said she is grieving now, and as part of that process, Rothschild is hoping to spark new interest in the unsolved murder of her sister, Christine Rothschild, who was an 18-year-old UW-Madison freshman when her body was found in a clump of bushes in front of Sterling Hall on campus on the evening of Sunday, May 26, 1968.
Dear Editor: I just read Rob Schultz’s story, “UW men’s basketball: Loopholes may allow game vs. Seminoles,” and am wondering if/when the University of Wisconsin is ever going to rescind that incredibly silly policy about nicknames.
“Florida State’s nickname is the Seminoles,” Mr. Schultz wrote, “and there is a school policy preventing UW athletic teams from playing another school out of conference that has a nickname offensive to American Indians.”
The department of chemistry is one of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s jewels, and so it was fitting Friday that the new chemistry building on campus was dedicated in honor of the man who did so much to build the department Irving Shain.
Shain, who led the department in the late ’60s and then went on to become chancellor of the UW’s Madison campus from 1977 to 1986, was feted Friday not only by Gov. Jim Doyle, naming the shiny new tower at the corner of Johnson and Charter streets for him, but by a scholarly chemistry faculty symposium and a School of Music concert that thanked him for his support throughout his years on campus.
Citing an ineffective and cumbersome student-athlete discipline policy, the University of Wisconsin Athletic Board voted unanimously Friday to approve a revised policy that it believes will be fairer and easier to understand.
That revised policy, which Athletic Board chairman Walter Dickey said will be implemented immediately, narrows the number of disciplinary committee members from six to four. It also gives that committee a more flexible range of measures to discipline student-athletes.
….Take a casual glance into the hordes of students walking across campus, and chances are you’ll notice a large number of them wearing a pair of cords around their neck. According to a survey last year by the Division of Information Technology, 35 percent of University of Wisconsin-Madison students own some kind of an MP3 player.Along with changing their musical habits, the devices are also changing the way students interact with each other.
Everybody who works hard and behaves well ought to have a fair chance to attend college, Gov. Jim Doyle told the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents.
On Friday, Doyle formally requested the regents include funding for the Wisconsin Covenant program, designed to get more Wisconsin residents enrolled in college, in their 2007-09 budget.
….From diploma frames to class rings to travel expenses, graduation can be another financial burden for students, and their families.
“I just don’t think the costs are worth it,” said Avi Galali, a UW-Madison senior who is graduating with a business degree. For Galali and her family, graduation is a time for family and not excessive celebrations.
However, the costs required to bring her family together from Minnesota will be significant, what with the price of gas, plus meals and hotels. Also, two of Galali’s grandparents are flying in from Israel, which will cost them over $2,400.
On April 4, 2004, Sara, an 18-year-old UW freshman, says she was sexually assaulted by two members of the crew team.
….On Wednesday, the UW Police Department referred the case to the District Attorney’s Office, where prosecutors will consider criminal charges. But last month the Dean’s Office closed the case, saying there was not enough evidence to impose sanctions against the student.
Dean’s Office officials say that because Sara was drunk and flirting with one of the men, they can’t prove that the sex wasn’t consensual. They also say that because Sara took more than a year to report the case to them, there is no physical evidence or eyewitnesses to back her allegation.
If the University of Wisconsin’s diversity challenges were a pass-fail course, then “we failed,” said Vicki Washington, UW System assistant vice president for multicultural affairs.
“We have not yet achieved the goals of Plan 2008,” she said in a presentation this (Thursday) morning, pointing to small successes over the last decade, but showing vast lingering gaps between the graduation rates of minorities and white students.
UW System President Kevin Reilly said pre-college programs appear to be successful, but require more money that UW doesn’t currently have.
At age 22, Leslie Shear was petrified to tell her parents she was gay. After all, they hadn’t reacted well when her brother came out.
“First my parents denied. Then they cried. Then they pried,” the UW Law School assistant professor told a crowd of about 100 during a town hall meeting of Madison’s Jewish community Thursday night at Temple Beth El on the city’s near west side. Oh, and then they sent her to a psychiatrist.
There’s no place like home, as Dorothy said, especially when there seems to be a wizard behind the curtain to give you Oz-like thrills.
That’s the big upside for the city’s two classical music orchestras, whose top-flight home performance halls could provide some dazzling experiences in the 2006-07 seasons.
….The Wisconsin Union Theater’s classical music season will unfold in its well-worn but reliable performance space. Truth be told, the Deco-era theater needs some sprucing up, but that shouldn’t affect the standard of performance.
Dear Editor: Why isn’t someone protesting the proposed demolition of the A.W. Peterson Building and Humanities Building on the UW campus? Why isn’t the campus itself, the American Institute of Architects, the Wisconsin Historic Preservation Committee, the city and state being thorough? I just learned about these proposed demolitions at the Triangle Badgers Founders Day Dinner recently….
Manisha Kapil
UW Class of 1983
Raleigh, N.C.
Milwaukee and Madison fell 38 places and 21 places, respectively, in Forbes’ eighth annual “Best Places for Business and Careers Survey,” which ranks the 200 largest U.S. metro areas based on economic conditions and quality of life factors.
Increases in the cost of doing business and the cost of living, combined with declines in income growth and job growth, contributed to Milwaukee’s fall to No. 124 from No. 86 a year ago. Those same areas caused Madison to skid to No. 31 from No. 10 a year ago.
Quoted: James LaGro, chair of the department of urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
At the conclusion of an otherwise nondescript spring football practice last month, first-year head coach Bret Bielema ordered the University of Wisconsin players to run a series of sprints in Camp Randall Stadium, from sideline to sideline.
Bielema acknowledged afterward that the sprints were a form of punishment for several players’ poor “off-field” performance, presumably in the classroom.
On Thursday, Bielema sent an even stronger message by announcing that he had suspended defensive end Jamal Cooper for the season opener Sept. 2 against Bowling Green.
A three-year push in the Legislature to amend the Wisconsin Constitution to control government spending died late Thursday.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is seeking an additional $8.8 million in state taxpayer dollars to boost its research, according to budget documents released Thursday.
In other actions, the regents’ business, finance and audit committee approved a measure to scrap the combined $700 monthly car stipends and mileage reimbursement that the chancellors and the UW System president receive. Under the measure, which will come before the full board today, these administrators would start leasing cars through the state Department of Administration.
In the midst of their lengthy wrangling over a bill to ban smoking in restaurants statewide, state senators stopped briefly to recognize one of their own – Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison.
Risser, who will celebrate his 79th birthday on Friday, is also marking the 50th anniversary of his election to the Legislature this year. He is tied with John J. Marchi of New York as the nation’s longest-serving state lawmaker.
….Risser, his family and fellow senators celebrated with a visit from Bucky Badger, UW-Madison cheerleaders and a huge cake in the shape of the Capitol.
A warrant was issued Wednesday for the arrest of former University of Wisconsin basketball player Roy Boone for allegedly slapping his girlfriend during a dispute in September.
The incident left the woman with scratch marks and a bloody nose, according to court documents. The warrant charges Boone with misdemeanor counts of battery and disorderly conduct.
….During the 1999-2000 season with the Badgers, Boone was put on probation after arrests for theft and disorderly conduct.
University of Wisconsin System campus administrators are raising student fees without appropriate oversight by students and the Board of Regents, an audit says.
The report from the UW System’s auditor, which was scheduled to come before the system’s Board of Regents today, recommends that the regents and students be given more oversight.
Regent Thomas Loftus called for the audit in November after a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report said annual student fees have doubled in the last decade.
AS A grizzled veteran from the front lines of the urban parking war, I am always interested when new technology enters the fray.
The fray I am referencing is our effort to park our cars, usually downtown or on campus, matched against the effort of various government and private entities to make certain we pay for the privilege.
On Wednesday, USA Today reported that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is on the cutting edge of this battle.
Is it my imagination, or does Gallery Night keep getting better?It’s probably a little of both. But some of the city’s new fine arts facilities sure help to give the twice-yearly event a higher profile.
Friday’s Gallery Night, from 5 to 9 p.m., features a record 47 venues, including museums, galleries and businesses.
There are certain landmark opportunities in every career path. For an American hockey coach, directing the United States in the Olympics usually ranks high on the list.
It’s impossible to tell whether the temp job Mike Eaves is about to embark upon is a step toward that opportunity, but it would at least seem to indicate his prominence on the list of potential candidates down the road.
A “university center” that combines resources from several education providers could emerge as the primary alternative to a hotly debated college campus merger idea.
Members of a merger task force appointed at Gov. Jim Doyle’s urging say the alternative concept would boost services at UW-Waukesha without allowing a complete takeover of the campus.
Campus administrators in the University of Wisconsin System are raising student fees without appropriate oversight by students and the Board of Regents, according to an audit set to come before the regents today.
But Regent Thomas Loftus, who called for the audit, doesn’t want to limit the fees or make other major changes to them. He said that with dwindling state support, the UW System needs to be able to raise fees as it sees fit.
“We might find ourselves in a situation in which the system has to rely on tuition and fees a lot more,” he said.
GEORGE ROONEY, who died at 90 over the weekend in Ohio, had a full life that included three years playing basketball for the University of Wisconsin in the late 1930s.
Rooney, who was born in Appleton, served as the Badgers captain – he also made All Big Ten – and it upset him his senior year in 1938 when the UW freshmen team beat the varsity. By 1941, Rooney could feel a little better about that loss. Those freshmen were now the varsity and they won the Badgers’ first and only NCAA basketball championship.
Through his life, Rooney never stopped following the fortunes of the Badgers….
MILWAUKEE (AP) – The University of Wisconsin System has stopped implementing new payroll software that cost $26 million in tax and tuition funds, the system’s executive vice president says.
Don Mash told the state Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities that the software, which was made by Lawson, may be scrapped altogether in favor of software made by Oracle or the 30-year-old homegrown software the system now uses.
“We couldn’t make this work,” he told the panel Tuesday. “We’ve got to dig ourselves out of this hole.”
The Assembly’s proposed constitutional amendment to limit state spending could force University of Wisconsin officials to choose between books and Badger sports, according to UW Board of Regents President David Walsh.
Under the Assembly version of the spending limit passed last week, every dollar of outside “program” revenue the UW picks up – including federal research grants, multimillion-dollar alumni gifts, and lucrative radio and TV contracts for Badger sports – would mean a dollar less of state taxpayer support for educational programs.
“It’s a disaster,” Walsh said in an interview. “It’s a very serious blow.”
An official at a campus area Catholic organization said he’s glad it appears his organization will receive student funding for the upcoming school year.
But the battle over using student funds for religious purposes is far from over, said Tim Kruse, development director for the UW Roman Catholic Foundation. The foundation owns St. Paul’s University Campus Center, located on Library Mall.
….On Friday and Saturday, Shain will be honored with two days of activities, highlighted by the dedication of the Irving Shain Chemistry Research Tower, the most modern of the three chemistry buildings. It is located at the corner of Johnson and Charter streets.
Billed as “an exciting weekend of science and celebration,” the tribute will include educational, social and artistic events, including a little classical music.
“I am delighted, I’ll tell you that,” said Shain in an interview this week.
Dear Editor: Once again, the city of Madison has compensated for its inability to control a minority of the yearly Halloween crowd by cracking down on the Mifflin Street Block Party like overprotective chaperones at a middle school dance.
The pettiness of 267 arrests and thousands of dollars in anticipated fines for a subdued and shortened event with no serious incidents is ridiculous. Underage drinking should not be a campus issue. College students are adults, and the absurd drinking age forced down Wisconsin’s throat by the abstinence-obsessed Reagan administration deserves repeal.
University of Wisconsin defensive end Joe Monty, who was seriously injured in a moped accident last week, was released from the UW Hospital and Clinics on Tuesday afternoon.
The question of whether student fees can be used to fund religious activities at Wisconsin’s public universities landed in the lap of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents on Tuesday after UW-Madison’s chancellor reluctantly agreed to fund UW Roman Catholic Foundation activities that he previously called into question.
The University of Wisconsin System has halted the implementation of new payroll software that has cost $26 million in taxpayer and tuition dollars, a top UW official told lawmakers Tuesday.
Researchers from across the state have received their first formal invitation to submit ideas that will formulate collaborative biological and medical research at Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
UW-Madison unveiled details of a competitive seed grant program Monday that will initially provide $3 million in funding for research at the $375 million facility expected to open in 2009.
“It is critical that these projects begin soon so that research is well under way when we are ready to move into this world-class facility,” said UW-Madison graduate school Dean Martin Cadwallader in a statement.
A proposed constitutional amendment to limit state spending, passed last week by the Assembly, ran into trouble on two fronts Monday.
A fiscal report said it would have produced virtually no change in state revenue growth over the last decade, and a Senate committee hammered it for not going far enough.
The limits would have capped annual revenue growth at 4.6 percent between fiscal years 1995 and 2004, the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau report said. Actual annual revenue growth over those years was 4.5 percent.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley today delayed the question of how much latitude to give a Catholic organization in receiving student-funding dollars.
He “provisionally” approved the student budget but said he will not allow funds to be released until the issue is sorted out.
Wiley said in a memo he believes the university is not authorized to give money to explicitly religious activities, but noted that religious organizations can receive some funding for secular or educational programming.
Just when you think you know everything about Madison, along comes Gwen Evans.
The Madison native has produced a nifty guide to the city that will be an excellent resource for longtime residents as well as clueless visitors. “Madison: The Guide” ($13.95, Jones Books) offers a new look at the festivals, quirks, businesses and unique diversions that make the capital city distinctive, attractive and endearing.
Organizers of the planned $375 million Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery in Madison said Monday that they are looking for researchers from around the state to compete in a new seed grant program.
So if government is going to fund the expression of a wide variety of moral, political and cultural views, it cannot exclude religious perspectives. To do so would be to take sides in the great debate between religion and secularism. It would advantage non-religious ways of thinking and would send a message that perspectives drawn from faith are disfavored.
But if a wall of separation is not quite accurate, metaphors – even bad ones – are powerful things. We let go of them reluctantly.
As a case in point, John Wiley, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently announced that the school’s student government may not allocate student fees to a Catholic student organization if those fees are to be used for “religious activities,” apparently believing this would be prohibited by the wall. Wiley is reviewing his decision.
Twice as many women as men have been diagnosed with depression in Wisconsin, according to national and state studies.
A task force appointed by Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton analyzed why that is and suggested preventive and treatment measures in a report issued today. Lawton said the report creates a road map to progress toward effective treatment and the end of “old-fashioned prejudices attached to mental illness.”
….The 15-member Task Force on Women and Depression in Wisconsin was chaired by UW-Madison Professors Janet Shibley Hyde, Ph.D., and Joy K. Rice, Ph.D.
Last week, the residents at 518 W. Mifflin St. were pumped for the street’s annual block party. But today, after police shut down their backyard house party – featuring a live band and a pig roast – they were feeling a little deflated.
“We were kind of bummed after that happened,” said Ted Horstick, one of the organizers.
Sometime this week, 11 people who organized the party are expected to be handed fines totaling thousands of dollars for a variety of municipal violations, including procuring alcohol for minors, dispensing alcohol without a license, and knowingly allowing underage persons to consume alcohol.
Toni Schriver wants to spread the word – and the healing nose nudge – of animal-assisted therapy.
So Schriver, a licensed veterinarian technician at UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, is building a nonprofit organization, PAWWS to Heal (Passionate Animals Working with Survivors), to make the soothing capacity of animals available to therapists to use with their clients.
ANYONE WITH an interest in Madison history and a free moment on Tuesday should consider stopping at the Italian Workmen’s Club on Regent Street, where a daylong conference, “The Greenbush: Past, Present, Future,” is being held.
This free-to-the-public event is a culmination of a yearlong project on the Greenbush – the triangular neighborhood formed by Park Street, Regent Street and West Washington Avenue that was undone by “urban renewal” in the 1960s – undertaken by Mark Wagler’s fifth-grade class at Randall School, with considerable assistance from the UW’s Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, local organizations and historians including Catherine Tripalin Murray, Carol and Iza Goroff, Joe “Buffo” Cerniglia and Anne Paratore Dinsmore.
The intimate Mills Concert Hall felt hardly large enough to contain the force of the UW Choral Union and Symphony Orchestra without crumbling. Director Beverly Taylor led 168 choir members, a 69-piece orchestra and four soloists, narrowly confined within the rim of the stage, in a colossal concert.
The Saturday and Sunday performances featured Antonin Dvorak’s weighty “Stabat Mater,” one of his rarely heard choral works, despite the fact that the Czech composer, more known for symphonic and chamber music, actually wrote several pieces for voice.
….(Gary) Tipler’s efforts toward preserving our community’s historic heritage as well as its architectural treasures will be recognized when he receives the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation Personal Advocacy Award this week.
….As a senior project at UW-Madison, Tipler wrote and produced a walking tour booklet on Williamson Street. He went on to do similar publications for the Mansion Hill and First Settlement neighborhoods.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez is losing another member of his senior staff to Iowa State.
David Harris, the UW’s director of academic services since 2002, is moving west to become Iowa State’s senior associate athletics director for student services and the administrator for the Cyclones’ football team.
Erin Hatton knows that Jamie Peck is unusually devoted to his work.
Last summer, Hatton needed to defend her dissertation so she could move to Buffalo, N.Y. Her dissertation was in Peck’s area of expertise, so his participation was necessary, she said.
But there was a problem: Peck, an avid cyclist, was seriously injured May 22 when a drunken driver hit him and fled the scene. Nevertheless, Peck honored the late July appointment, even meeting with her ahead of time to talk about the project, Hatton said.
Roberta Sladky says there was no “ah ha!” moment when she realized she’d just made a career change, one that led her this month to the director’s office at Olbrich Botanical Gardens.
Perhaps not; but Sladky’s college buddies from Chadbourne Hall at UW-Madison noticed something. At a get-together not long ago, they all remembered “how Bobbie loved that botany class!”
Separated from the chilly waters of Lake Monona by no more than a thin skin of concrete, college students from UW-Madison and 11 other schools put faith in their ability to design and build canoes out of a material usually more fit to be an anchor.
This feat of flotation, not always entirely successful on Friday, was part of the Great Lakes Regional Concrete Canoe Conference in which engineering students competed against one another for the chance to advance to a national competition while demonstrating the versatility of a rigid material.
Jamie Peck recalls a moment in September when President Bush vowed to spend “whatever it takes” – as much as $200 billion – to reconstruct the ravaged Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
But the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor notes that lately it appears Bush is backpedaling on that pledge. Peck says the president’s change of heart has the fingerprints of “neoliberal” think tanks.
Juan Gilbert invents computer software to learn by. A major breakthrough he’s had is not high-tech, however: He has cracked the puzzle of how to turn unheralded African-American students into academic whizzes. The key is what he calls the Asian model.
This finding may amount to a godsend for academic America, which is struggling to better reflect the nation’s racial diversity. The Journal Sentinel recently reported that, despite its prestige, the University of Wisconsin-Madison ranks low as a recruiting stop for many major corporations because it’s too racially homogeneous.
Assembly Speaker John Gard proclaimed in a news release that, with the passage of the Wisconsin Taxpayer Protection Amendment early Friday, Assembly Republicans had kept their promise to taxpayers. If he was able to put that news release together with a straight face, he deserves to be commended.
At best, the GOP kept only part of its promise to taxpayers to place a constitutional limit on the ability of state and local governments to spend and raise money. And it did even that in a manner that showed only disdain for voters and for the state constitution.
The University of Wisconsin football program nearly lost one of its members Friday morning when senior Joe Monty suffered serious facial injuries in a motor vehicle accident on campus.
Brian Calhoun tried to remain patient and optimistic. Yet waiting for nearly eight hours to hear your name called in the National Football League draft can test the patience of anyone.
“Obviously it was an all-day wait,” Calhoun said by phone from his parents’ home in Oak Creek after being taken by the Detroit Lions with the 10th pick of the third round. “I was up early, couldn’t sleep much last night. I had to wait patiently, but finally in the third round Detroit decided to pull the trigger.”
In the National Football League draft this year, scouts put the biggest premium on the University of Wisconsin’s prospects at the skill positions. For the first time since 1998, no Badgers defensive player or offensive lineman was selected in the draft.
Key Republican senators oppose an Assembly-passed constitutional amendment to limit state government spending – opposition that will make it hard, if not impossible, for the Senate to approve it in the final week of the legislative session.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students voted overwhelmingly in favor of their hyphen, stifling an attempt to change the name of the school.
