The auditor of the University of Wisconsin System agreed Thursday to launch a review of student fees at the request of a member of the UW Board of Regents.
The announcement by Ron Yates of the audit – the first one ever requested by a regent – came less than two weeks after the Journal Sentinel reported that annual student fees had more than doubled at most schools in the UW System, to as high as nearly $1,150 at UW-Green Bay.
Dear Editor: Now that the Donald Lipski monstrosity (I’m sorry, I meant to say artwork) has been dedicated and installed, I have a few last words on the subject.
….I really wonder if any other major college football program has such an ugly, inappropriate sculpture at an entrance to a football stadium. Probably not. This could only happen in Madison.
How do you get into the business of dairy farming?
That question has been asked for a hundred years. And I remember the answers given by my ag economics professor many decades ago when I was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin in the College of Agriculture.
….Craig Carncross, a 1999 UW-Madison dairy science graduate, made up his mind to become a dairy farmer and is doing it as part of a family corporation.
Steve Brown Apartments’ five private dorms serving UW-Madison students will be under new management with new names effective Jan. 1, the new management company announced today.
University Partners, a subsidiary of Dallas-based FirstWorthing, said it acquired the Highlander, Statesider, Langdon, The Towers and The Regent in 2004, with Steve Brown Apartments continuing to manage the properties.
George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic nominee for president, will speak at the Wisconsin Union Theater on Monday at 7:30 p.m.
McGovern, a former U.S. senator from South Dakota, will deliver this year’s Robert W. Kastenmeier Lecture. His lecture will be entitled “The Iraq War: Lessons From the Past.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley says he hasn’t seen any evidence that unionization would lead to better working conditions for apparel factory workers.
But his office is still considering a proposal that would require apparel companies that make university logo clothing to use union labor.
The Associated Students of Madison is urging Wiley to adopt the policy, which was endorsed 9-0 last month by the UW’s Labor Licensing Policy Committee.
When Barry Alvarez claimed that his 2004 Wisconsin football team had overachieved, moments after the Badgers had closed the season with their third consecutive loss, he opened himself to deserved criticism.
By contrast, Alvarez is entitled to make such a claim about this team, his last at UW.
Investigators searching for a missing woman arrested Steven Avery on an unrelated gun charge Wednesday and ordered him and seven of his family members to provide DNA samples.
Dear Editor: I am an engineering graduate student at UW-Madison and have attended Halloween on State Street for each of the last seven years. I have become very frustrated by the attitude of the police and the mayor over the last few years. Every year they claim to spend so much time planning the event, but the planning always results in minimal communication and excessive force by the police.
It seems to me most of the crowd would leave State Street at the threat of being pepper-sprayed, so why don’t the police warn us (if they have, I have never heard it)….It seems a little communication could go a long way.
As each day passes, the University of Wisconsin football program inches closer to the time when Barry Alvarez will no longer be around as head coach of the Badgers.
In other words, with each tick of the clock 35-year-old UW defensive coordinator and head-coach-in-waiting Bret Bielema gets closer to taking over the reins from Alvarez.
University Research Park has forged a “sister park” agreement with the Frankfort Biotechnology Innovation Center in Frankfort, Germany, in Wisconsin’s sister state of Hesse.
A memorandum of understanding between the two research parks was signed in Frankfort by UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, University Research Park Director Mark Bugher and Christian Garbe, managing director of the Frankfort Biotechnology Innovation Center.
Congress could vote this week to make it harder for low- and middle-income families to provide their children with a college education.
Republicans in Congress are trying to cut $50 billion in overall spending, and have targeted $14.5 billion in student financial aid cuts over the next five years. The House will vote on Thursday.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley has named Molly Jahn of Cornell University as the new dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
She will take over on Aug. 1, 2006.
Jahn is an expert in plant breeding, gene discovery and genetic mapping of agricultural plants.
Lawyer jokes are so ubiquitous it seems right to ask: Why not plumbers? Or municipal-bond salesmen?
Marc Galanter, professor emeritus of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, takes that question seriously.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences has named a Cornell University genetics expert as its new dean. Chancellor John Wiley announced on Tuesday that Molly Jahn, who works with plant breeding, gene discovery and genetic mapping of agricultural plants, will replace Elton Aberle next year.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will consider an agreement later this week that could bring a school of public health in Milwaukee closer to reality.
The board should approve it without delay and then closely monitor events to make sure the school actually gets established.
Molly Jahn named new dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. (Fourth item)
The University of Wisconsin Medical School would spend an additional $920,000 a year on various public health initiatives in Milwaukee under an agreement worked out with the City of Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Ever notice all those black spots on the sidewalk, especially in front of public buildings? Those are gum wads, discarded after all the sweetness and flavor have been chewed out of them.
Some gum chewers, like some cigarette smokers, seem to think it’s OK to throw their waste on the ground.
(Special to the Capital Times by Richard Hartel, a professor of food engineering in the UW-Madison Department of Food Science)
After raising five children and reaching the other side of 50, Susan McBride Gilgen launched a new career in 1997 as an artist of landscape quilting. Within months, her creations were winning “big league” awards in the world of fiber art and quilting.
Gilgen’s quilts have garnered awards and accolades from major shows in the United States and Europe.
….She will be one of the presenters at the second annual Conference on Arts, Curriculum and Community from Friday to Sunday at Monona Terrace. The event is sponsored by University of Wisconsin-Madison Education Outreach and the Wisconsin Arts Board.
….(Robert) Kenner’s film, based on David Maraniss’ book, “They Marched Into Sunlight,” forced viewers to confront the lessons of Vietnam that are made even more searing by the war in Iraq.
The television footage from the Halloween street battle, on the other hand, showed what happens when the UW-Madison’s Internet and bar culture reputation as America’s No. 1 Party School turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Here are a few ideas about how to make sure future Octobers in Madison don’t end up in a swirl of hard feelings, hangovers and hospital bills:
It took Barry Alvarez a few moments to fully warm up to the idea that his weekly Monday press conference was, for the most part, going to be a 26-minute question-and-answer session centering on the fact that Saturday will be his final game at Camp Randall Stadium as coach of the University of Wisconsin football team.
Not that anyone would expect anything different from an all-business, old-school coach like Alvarez.
….When asked if he has had any second thoughts about retiring from coaching, Alvarez said: “I try to think things out well enough before I make a decision. I never look back and say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have done this.’ I really haven’t.
“Outlined against a blue, gray November sky the Four Obelisk Conspirators rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Lipski, Nathan, Manke and Fish. They formed the crest of the Madison cyclone before which the project was swept over the precipice at Camp Randall Stadium last week as bemused spectators peered up upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the bizarre sculpture above.”
Something like that.
Students in the University of Wisconsin System binge drink at a higher rate than their peers across the nation, with 6 in 10 of them admitting doing so, a new survey shows.
The heavy drinking is taking a toll on college students at UW campuses from Platteville to Green Bay, often leading to poor academic performance and risky personal behavior, according to the survey of undergraduate students taken last spring by UW System staffers.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer.
Investigators said over the weekend that Steven Avery was among the last people to see Teresa Halbach, who took a photograph Oct. 31 at his home. She had been to his home several times in the past year to take photos of vehicles Avery sold.
Volunteers found Halbach’s Toyota Rav4 on Avery family property Saturday, but the 25-year-old woman is still missing. She was reported missing to Calumet County authorities Thursday.
Avery was freed — through the work of the UW Law School’s Wisconsin Innocence Project — after being jailed and falsely accused of committing a sexual assault.
TWO SATURDAYS ago, on a movie set in Chicago, a UW-Madison student named John H. Bradley ate a catered late lunch with a film crew that included the director, Clint Eastwood.
The scene being shot was at Union Station on Canal Street. The lunch break was just a half hour, but when Bradley sat down at a table he found himself seated next to the actor Ryan Phillippe, and that was an interesting experience, because in the movie being filmed, “Flags of Our Fathers,” Phillippe plays a 21-year-old U.S. Marine named John H. Bradley – young Bradley’s grandfather.
Dear Editor: As a 42-year-old law-abiding citizen, I feel compelled to express my outrage at the way people were pepper-sprayed Saturday night of Halloween weekend.
I can tell you that people were on their best behavior all night. Then without provocation the police appeared in riot gear and started pepper-spraying everyone for no reason. I was just standing there on the sidewalk minding my own business when I was pepper-sprayed. I was blinded for hours.
The Capital Times suggests that I chill out over Halloween. It is true that thanks to an unprecedented level of planning and cooperation among city officials, the Police Department, UW-Madison, students and downtown business owners, this year’s event was an improvement over past years. Most notably, we avoided the kind of serious property damage that has marred the event in the past.
But there is reason to be concerned, and a need to have a communitywide discussion about the future of Halloween.
Senior Amy Vermeulen started the scoring and added some second-half insurance as the University of Wisconsin women’s soccer team won the Big Ten Conference tournament championship Sunday with a 3-1 victory over Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Wisconsin (13-8-2) gets an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, which opens Friday.
As part of a decades-long practice in state government, at least a half-dozen political appointees of Gov. Jim Doyle were given higher-paying civil service jobs for as little as one day to ensure they could return to better state jobs than the ones they left to serve in his administration.
In a novel attempt to retain educated professionals and support local entrepreneurship, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation is launching an angel fund that will invest in companies that are founded by recent graduates and located in the Chippewa Valley.
Quotes Charles Hoslet, managing director of corporate relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Count us as among those who believe that if the subject is an avian flu pandemic, the administration would have been extremely negligent had it not raised the issue last week. mentions UW-Madison work on better ways to produce vaccines.
Quoted: Irving Piliavin, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.
Quoted: Vicki Bier, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professor.
Quoted: Patrick Sims, an assistant professor of theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ann Althouse, a UW Law School professor, says in a column that when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor decided to retire, it had been 11 years since a president had made an appointment to the Supreme Court.
During this time, political hopes and fears about the future of the Supreme Court had built up. And the O’Connor seat was quite noticeably the most significant slot on the court.
The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire is reviewing the legalities of its policy banning resident assistants from leading Bible studies in their dorms, a spokesman said.
The university’s associate director for housing and residence life sent a letter last July to several resident assistants who had been leading Bible studies.
Most University of Wisconsin System leaders should continue to receive backup jobs, a controversial perk in which administrators get lower-level jobs if they are fired, UW System President Kevin Reilly said Friday.
Republican lawmakers have called for the UW System to get rid of the perk, saying the university should not reward failed administrators with other campus jobs. UW System officials insist backup jobs are needed to recruit out-of-state talent, offering job security to employees who could be fired at will by chancellors.
When members of Dane County’s Muslim community gathered to celebrate the end of Ramadan with Eid al Fitr, the Festival of Fast-Breaking, on Thursday morning, they didn’t know until just hours before that they would be meeting.
That’s because the timing of the annual holiday is determined by the appearance of the slim crescent of a new moon, signaling the start of a new month in the Islamic lunar calendar.
Kemal Karpat, a professor of history at UW-Madison, is quoted.
IT WAS a few minutes before 4 p.m. Thursday, and the man of the moment, sculptor Donald Lipski, was pacing in front of his controversial creation at the corner of Breese Terrace and Regent Street outside Camp Randall Stadium.
….At the late-afternoon ceremony celebrating the completion of “Nail’s Tales,” the 48-foot, $200,000 obelisk that has left many observers shaking their heads, Lipski was like a proud parent celebrating a birth. He did everything but pass out cigars.
University of Wisconsin information technology managers are urging the UW System to dump a payroll software system that already has cost the university $25 million.
Fifteen chief information officers, representing all UW campuses but one, signed a letter urging the UW System to dump the Lawson payroll system software. They said that it’s too expensive and doesn’t operate well and that the company doesn’t have enough presence in the field of higher education.
Gerry Bernhoft changed the way the world worked with a better way to run hydraulic machinery. A mechanical engineering graduate of UW-Madison, he died Saturday at age 75.
Saying the state shouldn’t stand in the way of stem cell research in Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle on Thursday vetoed a ban on all forms of human cloning in the state.
Supporters of the ban said it would have prevented unethical research from being conducted here. Doyle went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Biotechnology Center to veto the bill (AB 499).
Every Tuesday last school year, Lance Steiger took a Bible to the basement of his dormitory at UW-Eau Claire and led a small group of friends in a discussion about a particular chapter or verse.
Steiger, a resident assistant and a junior at the time, said he was never told he could not lead a Bible study in the dorm where he worked helping students adjust to college classes and campus life.
But in July, he got a letter from school administrators warning him that if he continued to hold Bible studies in his dorm this year, he would face disciplinary action.
Dear Editor: As a peaceful participant (along with the other 99,600 State Street-goers), I thought the use of police pepper spray was ridiculous.
While trying to leave the 400 block of State Street, I got sprayed when I was legally leaving the bar at bar time and heading home just as the speakers told us to do. I had to run back in the bar like everyone else to escape this. I saw no attacks on police, their horses or any revolt against police except for maybe playful teasing.
University of Wisconsin Regent President David Walsh said the Board of Regents will not appoint a new investigator in the Paul Barrows matter.
Walsh wrote a testy reply to an angry letter from three lawmakers on Wednesday. The lawmakers were upset because UW President Kevin Reilly told a reporter that UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley informed him early on about his plans to demote Barrows, the former vice chancellor for student affairs.
As anti-war protesters made their lunchtime stand on Library Mall, a small band of counter-protesters sized up their ideological competition as they marched by.
“It’s 30 students and 150 old hippies,” mused one of the counter-protesters, before the two dozen conservative students broke into “God Bless America.”
It was, of course, an exaggeration. The anti-war group was about 400 strong. But on a beautiful fall day, the somewhat sparse turnout at Wednesday’s “The World Can’t Wait” rally had some protesters wondering where was the muscle behind their movement.
….Working at the UW I know how rules must be set down firmly for students, but this year I’m thinking the police were oversensitive and perhaps used tear gas when they did not have to. I think they were looking for a way to say “No More Halloweens” – and a quiet, peaceful one would not have given them what they want.
Since David Couper has left, the Madison Police Department has the mind-set that they are only doing their jobs when they are exerting their presence, by gassing crowds, knocking heads, and making arrests. Turn the police force into a helpful peace force. This will prevent future police riots. Another Halloween has come and gone. I am not going to elaborate on the mistakes.
I am disgusted with the Madison police and Mayor Dave for their handling of this year’s Halloween festivities.
….This is a disgrace. Simple solutions have been offered in the past – keep the bars open later or close them down all together. But Mayor Dave and the Madison Police Department think it’s best to use preemptive violence to solve the problem. Perhaps they’re following the lead of our so-called president. It seems after this year’s Halloween fiasco, they are at least as incompetent.
Dear Editor: I wanted to relate my personal experience from last Saturday night….
Dear Editor: New Orleans and Mardi Gras; Madison and Halloween.
That says it all.
How come New Orleans manages to celebrate Mardi Gras every year without generating national news headlines about “police riots,” pulling in thousands if not millions of dollars of tourist revenue, whereas Madison regularly loses its head and blows it every year at Halloween?
Come on, Mayor Dave! Take a delegation from Madtown down to the Crescent City and find out how they do it!
Theodore H. Voth Jr. Madison
Over the next 20 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will be, literally, growing up.
To alleviate cramped spaces in research areas and residence halls, the university will replace many of its surface parking lots with new six- and seven-story buildings and grassy spaces. The university plans to add 6.8 million gross square feet of building space in that time.
Those arrested during last weekend’s State Street Halloween celebration provide a snapshot of just how far the party’s reputation has spread, police say.
Those arrested came to the celebration from 15 states, including Wisconsin; 25 states if you add the hometowns of those attending universities in Wisconsin.
“It clearly shows this has become a well-known, large event, as people from all over the country attended,” police spokesman Mike Hanson said.
As police in riot gear worked to clear State Street after the annual Halloween Party, UW-Madison senior John Ostlund was leaving a bar, dressed as a sperm, and about to get dosed with pepper spray.
By his account, he had just left The City bar as it was closing, was “rather sober,” and had no warning that authorities were taking aggressive action to clear the area sometime after 2 a.m. on Sunday.
Colin Hutt thinks the region’s biotech industry is about to soar, and he wants his start-up public relations firm to be flying with it.
Green Bay Packer and former Badger Mark Tauscher donated $10,000 to Milwaukee Public Schools reading programs and said he hopes to support programs in other districts around the state.
Here’s a sobering word when it comes to all the heavy drinking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, especially during the mega-parties like last weekend’s annual Halloween bash and pepper spray festival.
Detox.
President Bush on Tuesday asked Congress for $7.1 billion in emergency spending to prepare for a possible pandemic of avian flu, the illness that some scientists fear could spread to humans from the disease now devastating birds and chickens in Asia and Europe.
At the same time, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are forging ahead with advances that could make the president’s proposed goals easier to attain.
