Author: jplucas

Playboy magazine sent out a press release last week with its list of the top party schools in the country, and UW-Madison ranked third. The general reaction to these lists on campus is a few grins from students along with some hand-wringing from the administration.When I received the release, I had a different reaction. I let out a primal scream. The release reminded me of a strange episode from my occasionally strange past. I think of it as “the story that wonâ??t die.” It began a decade ago and it still doesnâ??t really have a satisfactory ending.

Ronald Wiggins stood on the front stoop of his West Side apartment Saturday morning. As he watched, volunteers dug up the front lawn at 5818 Russett Road to plant fruit trees and shrubs, vegetables, herbs and flowers. About 70 volunteers worked from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday to transform the front yards of eight Russett Road apartment buildings into a community garden and beautification project. Members of the Madison Permaculture Guild created distinct designs for each building, whose owners agreed to turn over their front yards to the effort.The Russett Road Garden Project was made possible by about $3,000 in grants, donated plants and dozens of volunteers, including students from UW-Madison and Edgewood College.

Anti-war soccer mom Cindy Sheehan and a panel of national political activists are in town today to challenge both political partiesâ?? support for the war, but the event location remains up in the air. The event was originally scheduled to be held in the Memorial Union, but Steve Horn, the local student organizer, didnâ??t have the appropriate sponsorship lined up when he reserved the space, Wisconsin Union communications director Marc Kennedy said.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Campus Womenâ??s Center is in jeopardy after it has, for the first time, been found ineligible for its student funding.

In this academic year, between 200,000 and 450,000 U.S. college students will be raped.Thatâ??s what author Jessica Valenti and founder of the Feministing blog told a UW-Madison audience Thursday night. She calls it a “national epidemic,” and she blames what advocates call our rape culture.

UW-Madison officials are investigating the presence of a stripper at a university-sanctioned function involving dozens of medical school students. “This is not consistent with our school, our campus, our profession,” UW School of Medicine Associate Dean of Students Patrick McBride told 27 News.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine is investigating a university-sanctioned event where a group of medical students paid a stripper to attend and dance. The investigation focuses on an April 17 annual formal dinner and dance at the Great Hall in the Memorial Union.

The UW-Madison students who rejected a $108 increase in their annual fees to fund an expansion of the Natatorium certainly showed a better understanding of todayâ??s economic conditions and burdens on students and their families than the empire-building and wasteful administrators within the entire UW System.

First, the UW-Madison Campus Womenâ??s Center was stripped of its funding. Now itâ??s going to be stripped of its furniture. Because the center didnâ??t get funding from the General Student Services Fund for next year – a fund paid for and administered by students – the group has to give back all the capital purchases it has made over the years, said Tina Trevino-Murphy, programming coordinator.

The Madison Police Department said Thursday that officers busted a very large and sophisticated marijuana grow operation on April 13. One of the suspects is a UW-Madison student.

How does one restore a “sense of place” when there is little evidence of what the original looked like? Architectural detective work, attention to quality, brilliant – meaning both bright and intelligent – solutions and persistence were brought to the task of restoring the Library Reading Room at the Wisconsin Historical Societyâ??s campus headquarters. For the $2.9 million renovation and restoration project, the society received a room demure in tone, expansive in structure and inventive in meeting an odd challenge of in-with-the-really-old, out-with-the-old. These subjectives the public can test for itself in tours Friday and Saturday, but students and other researchers have already responded positively to the new room: The comfy brown leather reading chairs, the special soothing color tones, the lovingly restored column plaster curleys and cues and dangly bell flowers, the mahogany tables, the handy outlets for laptop computers and the inviting green-shaded lamps.

Madison officials have long labored to keep the Mifflin Street Block Party from turning the street into a “beer garden,” but this yearâ??s celebration will likely have one with the cityâ??s blessing. The 41st annual party, nearing final approval, is set to have a sponsor for the second straight year, two music stages, portable toilets, vendors, and, for the first time since 1995, a city-approved beer garden. The fete is a UW-Madison student tradition to celebrate the end of the school year, but it has bedeviled police and city officials because of its focus on alcohol and history of trouble. This year, officials hope to reduce alcohol use at the party by monitoring its flow. The idea is that sponsors and the police have more control at the beer garden than at house parties that rage along Mifflin Street.