Soon after a 911 call tipped off campus police to a shooting at the West Ambler Johnston Hall dorm at about 7:15 a.m. on Monday, administrators at Virginia Tech set in motion a sequence of events in a process that some are now criticizing.
MADISON, Wis. — A group from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Engineering Department was on the Virginia Tech campus during the tragic shootings on Monday, and one professor shared his experience there.
Three UW faculty members — Professor Thomas Lipo, Robert Lorenz and Thomas Jahns — were there with five undergraduate students for an engineering seminar. That building sits adjacent to the one where the second shooting took place, WISC-TV reported.
Lipo had been to Virginia Tech about 20 times in the past 30 years. He said that a day later he is still shaken from what happened.
MADISON, Wis. — Monday’s fatal shooting at Virginia Tech is resonating on many college campuses across the nation. Among them, the tragedy is provoking questions on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus as some students and officials are now wondering about their own safety.
Professor Tom Lipo arrived at the Dane County Airport Tuesday evening.
From his room at a conference facility on the Virgina Tech campus, UW-Madison Electrical Engineering professor Tom Lipo told 27 News the contingent included three faculty members and nine students. Lipo said at the time of the campus shootings, the students were in a building close to Norris Hall, where the majority of the fatal victims were shot. “He (the gunman) could have wandered in there. But our students are safe.”
UW-Madison officials are reassuring students security and notification procedures are in place in the event of a crisis.
But the Virginia Tech shooting spree is unleashing student concerns here.
“These were students and professors who were victims of the violence,” UW Teaching Assistant Robert Schoville told his Critical Thought and Expression Class.
MADISON, Wis. — In the wake of Monday’s deadly shooting at Virginia Tech, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department is considering ways to contact students faster in emergency situations.
UW-Madison police said that they are looking into the possibility of mass text messaging as a more appropriate and timely means of communicating with students during a crisis.
Five UW engineering graduate students and three faculty members arrived home safely from Virginia Tech Tuesday after being locked down on the campus during Monday’s shootings. One of the faculty members spoke to news reporters Tuesday.
UW faculty and students have been traveling to Virginia Tech for nine years in a row and working closely together for decades longer. Now the two schools have a special bond they never expected to. The sights and sounds of Monday’s shootings were terrifying, but imagine not being able to see or hear anything when shots you are just hundreds of feet away.
The first shooting happened in a dormitory, the second more than two hours later in a classroom building.
In the meantime, the university was preparing an e-mail alert. That notification after the first incident is coming under scrutiny.
Madison, Wis. – Problematic state information technology projects largely are the result of inadequate planning, a lack of oversight, and inadequate collaboration between the Department of Administration and executive branch agencies, according to a long-awaited report from the state Legislative Audit Bureau.
The RIAA’s latest attempt to convince college students not to share music using their university connections has not gone entirely smoothly. According to the RIAA, 49% of the students who have receiving the settlement notices have settled out of court; however, some universities are refusing to forward the notices to students in the first place, so the actual percentage is lower.
The latest to resist is North Carolina State University, where Pam Gerace, director of Student Legal Services, is trying to prevent sued students’ names from being turned over to the RIAA. According to her, “the RIAA actually said they might have use for the names in the future.” To protect students from additional lawsuits from record companies or even the RIAA itself, she says the names of those sued after refusing to settle should be kept out of the suits.
Quoted: U-W Madison juvenile justice researcher Ken Streit.
MADISON â?? With 1,450 students and an 84-acre main campus, Appleton’s Lawrence University is a far smaller school than Virginia Tech.
But when there’s an emergency on campus, as there was in Blacksburg, Va., on Monday, quickly communicating important information to students is a big challenge for schools of any size.
At any given time, any student can literally be anywhere, from a job off-campus to alone in a study lounge.
MADISON, Wis. â?? The decision to name a new elementary school after a Hmong military leader is winning praise from Hmong but criticism by some who question his past, particularly his ties with the CIA.
In the wake of Monday’s deadly college shooting in Virginia, what measures can large universities take to ensure student safety?
Entrances are locked at preschool to high school buildings across the country after many incidents of school violence, including the deadly rampage at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999. But college classrooms are spread across large campuses, and well-meaning students sometimes open dormitory entrances for strangers.
Students and parents want to know if UW has a plan in place should anything resembling Virginia Tech’s tragic shootings occur. Moments after hearing shots were fired at Virginia Tech Monday, the UW Police Department and UW administrators started hearing their phones.
“We started getting phone calls from the public asking us what our response would be if a similar situation would happen on our campus,” says Sargeant Michael Newton.
MADISON, Wis. — Monday’s fatal shooting at Virginia Tech is resonating on many college campuses across the nation. Among them, the tragedy is provoking questions on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus as some students and officials are now wondering about their own safety
In the search for answers as many seek to comprehend such a scenario, many at UW are asking the question: Could this happen here?
MADISON, Wis. — The Virginia Tech tragedy is resonating across college campuses across the nation.
UW sophomore Sarah Backhaus wondered if the same situation could happen at the UW.
“I always felt kind of safe here,” said Backhaus. “I felt like during the day, at classes, that’s the safest time to be on campus, and then you never know who is just going to walk into classes, I guess.”
A contingent of a dozen UW-Madison engineering faculty and students is safe after visiting the Virginia Tech campus on the same day of what’s being called the worst shooting spree in U.S. history.
From his room at a conference facility on the Virgina Tech campus, UW-Madison Electrical Engineering professor Tom Lipo told 27 News the contingent included three faculty members and nine students. Lipo said at the time of the campus shootings, the students were in a building close to Norris Hall, where the majority of the fatal victims were shot. “He (the gunman) could have wandered in there. But our students are safe.”
For years, UW students were able to buy the pill well below cost; eight to nine dollars s a pack rather than the â??real-worldâ? price of 30 to 50 dollars a pack.
That all changed after the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, federal legislation which no longer allowed colleges to offer birth control at a nominal cost.
Police call an incident outside of a UW sorority house disturbing. Investigators say the cruel nature of it raises concerns that whoever is responsible is capable of something worse.
The animal cruelty case starts at the front door of Pi Beta Phi sorority.
“I don’t know who would do something like that, it’s kind of sick,” neighbor and UW junior Rick Jobski said.
Administrators at colleges around the country closely followed news of the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech on Monday, and campus officials responsible for safety, crisis planning, and risk management began weighing the lessons of the tragedy.
Efficient communication is the most important element of an institution’s disaster response, risk experts said, but getting an announcement across a campus is a difficult task. At Virginia Tech, the first shootings happened early enough that staff members who would typically handle such announcements may not have been in their offices yet.
As darkness fell over the Virginia Tech campus here on Monday night, hundreds of students clutched one another in tears at the Holtzman Alumni Center to wait for news about friends they feared had died in one of the deadliest shooting rampages in American history.
Hours earlier a gunman had opened fire in a classroom building, killing 30 people and injuring at least 30 others before turning the gun on himself. Before that, the police say, he killed two people in a dormitory.
The rampage stunned those on this close-knit but sprawling 2,600-acre campus that is nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains.
And even as Virginia Tech reeled from the massacre, many people questioned the university’s response. They wanted to know why it took more than two hours to notify the 26,000-student campus of the first shootings, and why more buildings were not locked down sooner.
The President of the UW System says campuses will be ready to deal with the first class of students signing the Wisconsin Covenant. Thousands of 8th graders are expected to sign the agreement in May, which will guarantee them access to a college education. UW System president Kevin Reilly says they’re gearing up to meet that expected increase in students with their growth agenda. That includes increasing physical space at UW schools and adding more faculty.
University of Wisconsin System researchers are in an even better position to land federal research grants, and stimulate economic development, as the result of a new research network that is one million times the capacity of a typical home broadband connection.
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department was ahead of the national curve in 2002 when it consolidated its multimedia elements and gave Learfield Communications exclusive rights to manage them.
Five years later, thanks to a new long-term deal with Learfield, UW has perhaps the most lucrative multimedia arrangement among all NCAA Division I schools.
The UW Board of Regents Friday approved a renegotiated contract with Learfield that guarantees a minimum of $75 million for UW athletics and extends the partnership 10 years through 2019.
MADISON â?? Bo Ryan got rewarded Friday for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team’s record-breaking season that saw the team hold the No. 1 ranking for the first time in school history.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approved giving Ryan a $250,000 bonus, raising his total compensation package next year to $1.25 million.
Under Ryan this season, the team finished 30-6, held The Associated Press ranking for one week, but exited from the NCAA Tournament in the second round despite earning a No. 2 seed.
“Bo’s able leadership has built a program that has earned national respect and recognition, not only for UW-Madison, but for the entire state,” Chancellor John Wiley said in a statement. “He is dedicated to providing consistent excellence, on and off the court. This contract change recognizes those efforts.”
Quoted: David Bordwell, a professor of film at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Quoted: Jonathan Patz, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
A network administrator at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was entitled to view the contents of a student’s computer remotely without first getting a warrant because the student posed an immediate threat to the campus network, a federal appeals court has ruled.
But college legal experts said the court’s decision, rather than limiting students’ privacy, broke new legal ground in support of it. The ruling said the student had “legitimate, objectively reasonable privacy expectations” concerning the data on his computer even though he had connected it to the university network. University policies, no matter what they say, “do not eliminate [the student’s] expectation of privacy in his computer,” the decision said.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison atmospheric scientist Jonathan Martin.
MADISON, Wis. — Area welders are taking more precautions amid emerging research into a potential link between welding and Parkinson’s disease.
Dr. Erwin Montgomery, a neurologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that scientists know that manganese might be an environmental trigger to Parkinson’s disease.
Quoted: Joanne Cantor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an internationally recognised expert on children and the mass media, and the author of Mommy, Iâ??m Scared.
MADISON, Wis. � Prosecutors retrying a 1980 murder cannot use the results of a DNA test because they did the testing on a key piece of evidence without notifying the defense and in the process used up the material.
Dane County Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser said the state acted in â??bad faithâ? when it went did the testing in violation of the judgeâ??s order.
Ralph Armstrong, 54, is set to be tried in June for the second time for the 1980 murder and rape of University of Wisconsin-Madison student Charise Kamps in her apartment.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) – University of Wisconsin-Madison business students learned a painful lesson about supply and demand Friday when their tuition was increased by $1,000 for next year.
Saying demand for business education was increasing faster than state support, the UW System Board of Regents raised business majorsâ?? tuition by $500 per semester to boost teachersâ?? pay and hire more faculty and staff.
â??The differential is needed to maintain the high quality of the program,â? Regent Charles Pruitt of Shorewood said before the regents voted at a meeting in Oshkosh.
Quoted: Richard Slaughter, director of the geology museum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The state has agreed to pay $20,000 in legal fees to lawyers for an evangelical group that the University of Wisconsin-Superior refused to recognize because it requires its leaders to be Christians.
In a settlement made public Friday, the university also agreed to reinstate the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and award it student fees for activities.
The group filed suit last year after UW-Superior turned down its request for funding and said it could not be recognized because its leaders must sign a statement saying they believe in the Bible and Jesus Christ.
Madison school board member Carol Carstensen is having second thoughts about the boardâ??s unanimous vote to name a new Madison elementary school for Genereal Vang Pao, a Hmong leader and U.S. ally during the Vietnam War.
Reacting to a report on The Daily Page that Pao was linked to war crimes and the heroin trade in southeast Asia, Carstensen said Friday “that information was not something I had access to until after we made the decision.”
Carstensen says she’d like to make a motion to reconsider the decision at Monday’s board meeting, but can’t find a second. “Nobody sounds like they’re interested in revisiting the issue.”
Now that statewide public hearings have wrapped up, members of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee are ready to tackle the state budget. JFC co-chair, State Senator Russ Decker (D-Weston), says the six hearings held around the state over the past month brought up many budget issues lawmakers expected to hear. Funding of public education, health care cost containment, and road improvements were among the most common issues brought up.
Decker says he’s ready to use the information gained through meeting with the public to start negotiating the state budget. He’s hopeful the JFC can get to work soon on the Governor’s budget proposals.
Still, the Weston Democrat is expecting difficulties with a divided legislature and committee. The JFC has eight Democrats and eight Republicans, prompting many concerns over a long delay in the budget process. Despite that, Decker hopeful that budget talks can begin sometime this week.
The room really was much too big.
Wearing a surprised expression, Delta Lambda Phi president Jake Aebly walked tentatively into the Red Gymâ??s On Wisconsin room, which is as spacious as a basketball gymnasium. His eyes were wide as he looked around.
â??This is not the room I requested!â? he said to fraternity brotherhood director Michael Balen, who had been sitting alone in the room, waiting for eight or so of his brothers to join him. They had more space, comically more space, than they needed for their business meeting that Sunday night last December. Balen looked amused. Aebly did not.
Quoted: Associate Director John Stevenson of the UW Survey Center.
At least one UW-Eau Claire student has accepted a settlement offer as the Recording Industry Association of America continues to crack down on illegal music downloading on college campuses.
Freshman Courtney Dokkestul, who received a letter during the first round of notifications, said she has accepted a settlement offer for a principal amount of $3,000.
“At first I thought it was a joke,” Dokkestul said, adding she still hasn’t decided whether to go with a six-month payment plan for $3,250 or a 12-month plan for a total of $3,500.
MADISON, Wis. — A new gay fraternity is opening on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
It is the first gay fraternity on campus in more than 15 years, WISC-TV reported.
“Building a fraternity, a chapter or a colony, is a lot of work. So what I’m doing isn’t necessarily for me,” said Rodolfo Alaniz, co-founder of Delta Lambda Phi.
Alaniz said that the idea of starting a gay fraternity came up three years ago.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his colleagues infected seven close relatives of the rhesus with a reconstructed version of the flu virus that killed more than 50 million people in the infamous 1918 epidemic; three other monkeys were infected with a modern human flu virus.
Quoted: Michael Podgursky, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied teacher pay and work hours.
Efforts by universities to turn inventions into quick cash has bogged down innovation, a new study concludes.
Â
The study, unveiled Thursday at the Innovation Policy and Economy Summit in Washington, contends that universitiesâ?? â??home run mentalityâ? creates a focus on technologies that offer the â??biggest, fastest payback,â? but keeps much intellectual property buried on campus and away from the ma
What if they created a college rankings system and nobody participated? That question is growing increasingly relevant as a burgeoning number of college presidents say they are fed up with U.S. News & World Report’s popular annual feature. Arguing that the rankings do a disservice to prospective students, a group of ranking critics, including several college presidents, are preparing to send a letter urging college presidents nationwide to not cooperate with U.S. News and other publications that compile such data. Earlier this year, the president of Trinity University in Washington, D.C., writing in a publication for university trustees, urged colleagues to toss their surveys in the trash, as she has done for years.
Parents who send their children to four-year colleges have long been above average when it comes to income. But today’s freshmen are financially better off than ever before, and the gap is widening, a report on 40-year trends in higher education shows.
Freshmen in 2005 reported median family incomes 60% higher than the national average, says the report, released by UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program. In 1971, incomes were 46% above the national average.
Differential tuition could continue at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh if the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents gives the proposal a continuing green light today.
The continuation of UWO’s differential tuition plan received the blessing of the regents’ finance committee Thursday, the regents first day of meetings at the UWO campus.
Differential tuition is any tuition charged for students above what other students in the UW system pay. At Oshkosh, the fee has been used to provide for more academic advising, career counseling and other student support services.
Salaries of full-time college faculty rose 3.8% this year, the biggest increase in five years. Academic salaries vary significantly, depending on rank and institution, but the overall increases narrowly beat inflation and were the highest since 2002, according to an annual survey to be released Thursday by the American Association of University Professors. Salaries of full professors rose 4.2%, slightly better than the increases for lower ranks.
MADISON, Wis. — Defensive end Jamal Cooper is back on the University of Wisconsin-Madison Badger football team.
Cooper was suspended earlier this year for failing to meet several academic standards set by coach Bret Bielema.
He has now been reinstated and practiced on Thursday for the first time this spring.
(MADISON) The University of Wisconsin-Madison sent an envoy to El Salvador Thursday, to investigate allegations of mismanagement and corruption at a factory that made official sportswear for the University.
Hermosa Manufacturing contracted with Adidas to make UW clothing from 2000 to 2002. After it closed in 2005, complaints streamed in from former employees, including claims that 260 people were dismissed without receiving $825,000 in back pay or severance, and that unionized workers were blacklisted.
A look at the facts in the dispute over three important University of Wisconsin stem cell patents – and the history behind similar disputes – shows a strong likelihood that the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation will retain all of its patent rights, even if some of its claims are changed or cancelled.
Encouraged by the inaugural results of their season ticket revocation policy, University of Wisconsin Athletic Department officials plan to maintain the current guidelines for 2007-08.”We felt for its initial year, it did what we wanted,” UW senior associate athletic director Doug Beard said Wednesday.
In a largely symbolic act, the Senate voted Wednesday to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. President Bush has vowed to veto the measure, as he did last year, and backers acknowledged they don’t have the votes to override him. Still, proponents of the bill say they wanted to send the president a message: This issue isn’t going away.
Concern apparently has been voiced across the state that the recent U.S. Patent Office decisions rejecting three patents held by the patenting and licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin could be a devastating blow to the state’s acknowledged leadership in stem cell research.
As one of the parties who lodged the thus-far successful challenge against the overreaching patents on human embryonic stem cells held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, let me reassure you that is simply not the case. And despite what WARF officials say, that’s not at all because appeals will be successful.
For students at the University of Wisconsin, a Motion W on clothing around campus doesnâ??t get a second glance.
But concerns about the $1.2 million contract UW has with Adidas â?? one of many clothing companies licensed to use the logo on its products â?? have garnered national attention.
The controversy centers on whether or not Adidas is working to uphold necessary labor conditions in some of its factories.
Quoted: Laurel Crown, a researcher in the department of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studied college women’s negative sexual experiences.
The University of Wisconsin-System’s Board of Regents is in Oshkosh today.
So, while the regents are in town, visiting the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, there are a couple of community positives and housekeeping matters to point out.
Tuition, new buildings and regional collaboration will be among the topics the University of Wisconsin system Board of Regents will discuss when they meet on the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh campus today and Friday.
The two-day meeting will include presentations about UWO campus activities and give the regents a chance to set university system policy.
MILWAUKEE â?? It’s almost time for millions of cicadas to emerge in parts of the Midwest after 17 years of living underground.
University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri says a lot of people find the huge number of the insects reminiscent of a horror movie. But they don’t bite, don’t really damage anything, stick mostly to trees and are non-toxic to the point that some people eat them.
