Over the past several years, college tuition has been a hot topic. Millennials are living at home following graduation because they cannot pay off their student loans and they are putting off purchases such as homes.
Noted: Studies show mixed effects of early voting on turnout, said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Some find no effect, and many find negative effects. Others have found early voting increases turnout by between 2 and 4 percent.
Noted: In trying to better understand what happened in Wisconsin, and for that matter in the outcome of the election nationwide, one of the first people I wanted to speak with was Kathy Cramer. For almost a decade, the political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been inserting herself into the casual political conversations of smaller rural communities in her state—listening, asking questions, and ultimately identifying the common threads she’s been able to uncover.
Of course, the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States caused anxieties among nations in the Indo-Pacific which have been threatened by an expansionist China seeking regional predominance, nations which therefore seek help from the U.S. government. These governments do not want the U.S. government, however, to run an anti-China containment policy. Their regional resistance to a hostile Chinese hegemony is far more nuanced than that. The big question is whether Donald Trump is capable of such nuance.
Noted: “We’ve been seeing this trend of later and later cooler temperatures in southern and western Wisconsin and we’re not really sure of the cause of that,” said Jordan Gerth, associate researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The election of Donald Trump to the presidency has prompted a growing number of petitions signed by students, faculty members and alumni at colleges and universities across the country calling on their institutions to limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement authorities and to declare theirs “sanctuary campuses.”
Professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are researching the effect the state’s new voter ID laws had on turnout in this year’s presidential election.
Making sense of this presidential election requires figuring out what happened in rural places across the country. This is especially true in the Upper Midwest, where there were sharp swings toward Donald Trump that helped produce surprising victories in states such as my home state of Wisconsin.
We decided to wait until after the election to begin editorializing in support of the University of Wisconsin’s request for an increase in state funding in the upcoming budget.
Noted: Emily Stanley, a professor in liminology and marine science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the study is “very relevant” because it delivers the best available information about greenhouse gas emissions from dams. It shows that high methane emissions are not linked to the location or antiquity of the reservoirs, as other researchers suggest, but to the quantity of organic material.
Quoted: “The supermoon is a made-up term,” said James Lattis, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s not an astronomical term, there’s no technical definition of it.”
Katherine J. Cramer is author of The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she heads the Morgridge Center for Public Service. Her work focuses on the way people in the U.S. make sense of politics and their place in it. Cramer’s methodology is unusual and very direct. Instead of relying polls and survey data, she drops in on informal gatherings in rural areas—coffee shops, gas stations—and listens in on what people say to their neighbors and friends. It is a method that likely gets at psychological and social truths missed by pollsters.
Election night in the United States found Kan Wei, a professor at China’s Beijing Normal University, in a living room in Madison, Wisconsin. As he watched election returns alongside other scholars attending an international symposium, his thoughts turned to how a Trump presidency might affect his research on comparative education. “It’s kind of the beginning of the closing of the US door,” he remembers thinking.
Noted: The flip side to cosmopolitanism—the “rural consciousness,” in the phrasing of University of Wisconsin–Madison political scientist Katherine J. Cramer—is now both an identity and an electoral force. Trump won dominant support in rural America. He outran Romney by more than 40 percent in large swaths of the Midwest. His rural success was not confined to the Rust Belt.
Quoted: Almost everything a president does by executive order can be undone by a subsequent executive order,” said Ken Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wrote “With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power.”
Quoted: “Voters see the outcome and think, ‘My vote won’t matter,’” said Barry C. Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And even if the voter wants his vote to count, it’s still a hassle. You have to take another step that other voters don’t have to.”
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities set the theme for its opening keynote discussion here Sunday well before Election Day. The topic: “Balancing Freedom of Expression and Diversity on Campuses.” The election results weren’t just the elephant in the room for the session, but were more like a herd of elephants stomping through the room.
But if you’re wondering about the widening fissure between red and blue America, why politics these days have become so fraught and so emotional, Kathy Cramer is one of the best people to ask. For the better part of the past decade, the political science professor has been crisscrossing Wisconsin trying to get inside the minds of rural voters.
Noted: The University of Wisconsin political scientist Katherine J. Cramer, the author of “The Politics of Resentment,” described what this looked like during years of field research in Wisconsin in an insightful interview with Jeff Guo at The Washington Post. The people she met across a state that Mrs. Clinton ultimately lost felt deeply disrespected (and suspicious of a white-collar academic from uber-blue Madison). “They would say, ‘The real kicker is that people in the city don’t understand us,’ ” Ms. Cramer said. “ ‘They don’t understand what rural life is like, what’s important to us and what challenges that we’re facing. They think we’re a bunch of redneck racists.’ ”
Noted: “It is quite difficult to discern what the election results will be from early voting numbers,” University of Wisconsin early voting expert Barry Burden said. “The patterns do not tell a coherent national story. … Ballots are coming in at different rates for the parties in each state. The messages appear to differ from one state to the next.”
Noted: UW-Madison journalism professor Michael Wagner calls Johnson’s win a true upset.
Noted: In 2007, Katherine Cramer began visiting Wisconsin’s small towns and listening to the conversations people were having. Cramer, director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service and professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the nation’s changing demographics and a globalized, more high-tech economy have left many in mostly white, small towns feeling left out. That’s how Wisconsin and other Midwestern states that were projected to be part of Clinton’s firewall flipped to Republican.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin athletics department officials announced changes Wednesday night to the school’s carry-in and ticket policies for home sporting events, beginning this weekend. The decision comes in response to an Oct. 29 home football game in which two people were involved with a Halloween costume depicting President Barack Obama in a noose.
Quoted: “Wow,” said political scientist Kathy Cramer, who studies rural communities, when she heard that number. No GOP nominee had won the rural vote in Wisconsin by more than 10 points in recent decades. Democrat Obama won them by 8 in 2008.
Noted: With a Republican majority in the United States Congress, subsidies and other ACA funding could be withheld, said Donna Friedsam, University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute health policy director.
Kathy Cramer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has spent the last decade criss-crossing Wisconsin talking to rural folks about politics. Today she tells us what they’re so mad about:
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank apologized Monday for her school’s mishandling of a situation at an Oct. 29 football game against Nebraska in which two fans were not asked to leave after depicting Donald Trump hanging Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with a noose.
University of Wisconsin-Madison is printing out last minute voter identification cards for students at polling places on campus.
Noted: To learn more, a great starting point is a map created by Carl M. Sack, a geographer and cartographer studying at the University of Wisconsin whose wider body of work can be explored at Northlandia.com.
Wisconsin basketball star Nigel Hayes is speaking up again, this time on racial injustice.
Rebecca Blank, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, on Monday apologized for the way the university responded to an incident last month when two fans at a football game wore costumes and had props depicting the lynching of President Obama (at right). Authorities at the time asked the two fans to stop using the noose, and the fans complied, but many said the university should have done more.
In Wisconsin, like most of the country, Raccoons are practically omnipresent. Their adaptability has allowed them to move from the country landscape as a wildlife creature to an urban life in cities and towns across the state. There are a few factors that make the raccoon especially adept at finding the food and shelter they need living among people, said University of Wisconsin-Madison professor David Drake.
Noted: Many scientists and public health officials are loath to identify those patients and avoid the term “patient zero” altogether, said Thomas Friedrich, an associate professor of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.
MADISON, Wis. — Several University of Wisconsin athletes used their Twitter accounts Monday night to post a statement demanding change in racial inequalities on campus. The message came in the wake of an incident at an Oct. 29 home football game in which two people were involved with a Halloween costume depicting President Barack Obama in a noose.
Just three months off of a gold medal performance at the Rio Olympics, triathlete Gwen Jorgensen s already looking ahead to the 2020 games in Tokyo.
Franklin County Commissioners plan to hire University of Wisconsin researchers to review procedures at the county dog shelter following the distemper outbreak in September that forced officials to euthanize 100 canines.
Quoted: “Some people are probably going to overreact, and there will be other investors trying to second-guess what those investors are doing,” said David Brown, a professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin School of Business, in Madison, Wisconsin. “There is a salience of short-term events, particularly bad events, that lead people to react to short-term information.”
Noted: That Hillary Clinton may not have the same black early voter turnout as President Barack Obama, our first African-American president, did in 2008 and 2012 is not particularly surprising. “In 2008 and 2012, black voter turnout rose enough to erase the gap in participation between blacks and whites,” early voting expert Barry Burden, a political scientist with the University of Wisconsin Madison, said.
Noted: Another reason for the shift, said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is the Republican’s unorthodox campaign.
It was the unmistakable scream of a distraught child,with the drama playing out just inside gate C of the UW Field House.As the mom led her weeping child away, she offered up a sigh andan explanation for the meltdown: “The volleyball match is sold out.”
For nearly a week, the police in Menomonie, Wis., have been at a loss to identify a suspect or a motive in the fatal beating of a Saudi Arabian college student outside a pizza restaurant. Now, the city is trying to change that by raising money for a reward. The tally so far? $20,000.
The number of University of Wisconsin-Madison students who registered to vote this election cycle is higher than the last.
WAUSAU – University of Wisconsin officials commended two longtime central Wisconsin professors for their work in making math more understandable and accessible for students who struggle with the X’s and O’s.
University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County faculty and staff gathered around the university’s Sifting and Winnowing plaque Tuesday to recognize colleagues who left the UW System due to what they view as an attack on the Wisconsin Idea.
A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison African-American alumni sent a letter with more than 160 signatures to the university’s chancellor Tuesday afternoon expressing their frustrations with the racial climate on campus.
Can you look poverty in the eyes? Matthew Desmond, author of The New York Times bestselling book Evicted, wants to know. His book was this year’s Go Big Read selection.
Noted: Sharing that you voted online or showing off your sticker face-to-face actually encourages other people to vote, said Mike Wagner, an elections expert and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Noted: The University of Wisconsin at Madison, for instance, used to offer screenings free of charge to students and nonstudents in the local area. But although it still serves students, the university stopped community screenings after state funding was cut. Still, though, the free screenings for students are a vital resource. In addition, after the CDC data were released, administrators at University Health Services have been discussing how to reach out to high-risk patients and close the gap in the university’s educational outreach and screenings, according to William Kinsey, director of medical services at Madison.
Quoted: “In 2008 and 2012 black voter turnout rose enough to erase the gap in participation between blacks and whites. The early vote data suggest that black turnout might recede somewhat in 2016 while Latino turnout surges,” early voting expert Barry Burden, a political scientist with the University of Wisconsin Madison, said.
Lynda Barry likes to say things that most people shouldn’t or couldn’t. A short conversation about her job as a teacher gets very interesting very quickly.
Social media erupted over the weekend after a pair of football fans showed up at the Wisconsin Badger football game in Halloween costumes depicting Donald Trump hanging Hillary Clinton and President Obama with a red and white rope noose.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison continues to face criticism this week after two fans at Saturday’s football game wore costumes and a noose to depict Donald Trump lynching President Obama.
It’s Halloween, so put on your seat belts, brothers and sisters, and get ready for an onslaught of racist Halloween costumes coming from white college students who think your humanity is fair game for chuckles. The blackface paint will flow as white students think that smearing it on, along with a sign that says, “Black Lives Matter,” is the most hilarious thing they can do. And when they get caught, and suspended by their universities, they’ll all proclaim, “I had no idea it was racist!” Don’t be bamboozled, my friends.
A Halloween costume involving President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and a noose worn by two attendees at a University of Wisconsin football game has reignited the debate on the role universities play in protecting free speech and curbing hateful words.
Quoted: “Aneurysms are not uncommon, and a great majority of aneurysms don’t rupture,” said Charles Strother, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “So when you are faced with a patient with an unruptured aneurysm, it’s a quandary because if it ruptures, it’s a serious condition and 30 to 40 percent of patients die.”
Three new bias incident reports have been filed since an individual wore a Barack Obama mask and noose costume to a University of Wisconsin-Madison’s football game Saturday.
Two fans at Saturday’s Wisconsin-Nebraska game in Madison, Wis., enacted a scene that many found offensive, both in the stadium and through images that circulated online. One fan wore a Donald Trump mask and held a noose around the neck of the other fan, who was wearing a Barack Obama mask and a prison-striped outfit.
It doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that relations are strained between the University of Wisconsin System and Republicans in the state Capitol. Gov. Scott Walker has proposed extending a tuition freeze for a fifth and sixth year in the 2017-19 biennial budget, a freeze which System administrators say jeopardizes higher education in the state. Walker and his counterparts in the GOP majority in the Legislature would likely reply by inquiring about the status of the System’s cash reserves, which stood at $648 million in the spring of 2013.
Interviewed on UW Campus Climate: Lori Berquam & Patrick Sims
Talk about going out of bounds. A pair of football fans showed up to a University of Wisconsin game Saturday with a Barack Obama mask ? and a noose wrapped around its neck.
