Category: Business/Technology

Who owns the air and sky between Langdon Street and Lake Mendota on the UW-Madison campus?

That question is delaying efforts by the UW Hillel Foundation to more than triple the size of its existing student center at 611 Langdon St.

The Jewish student organization, which traces its roots here to the 1920s and is the second oldest operating Hillel in the world, is seeking approval to tear down its existing 12,000 square-foot building and replace it with a four-story, 40,000 square-foot facility.

The Hillel center for UW-Madison ‘s Jewish students is hoping to break ground soon on a new facility, complete with a kosher cafe and an environmentally friendly design.

Igal Hendel, a former UW-Madison economics professor, resigned two years ago along with several other professors due to the declining salaries and resources of the university.

By JOSHUA FREED
AP Business Writer

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — An attorney for six major music companies urged a federal jury Thursday to find a Minnesota woman liable for damages for illegally downloading and sharing music online, activity he said has gnawed at the industry’s bottom line.

Record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 claiming their music’s been misused, but the case against Jammie Thomas, a mother of two from Brainerd, is the first to go to trial. Many other defendants settled by paying the record companies a few thousand dollars.

Regardless of how the first trial of a person accused of illegally sharing music online turns out, a spokesman for a record industry group said companies plan to keep suing listeners.

Downtown tavern owners who ended weekend evening drink specials in 2002 don’t have immunity from anti-trust legislation because the city of Madison never officially enacted a ban, an attorney for former University of Wisconsin students told the state Supreme Court Wednesday.

Although they may have been pressured by Ald. Tim Bruer to take measures to reduce their customers’ binge drinking, 24 tavern owners illegally conspired to fix prices when they voluntarily banned drink discounts Fridays and Saturdays after 8 p.m., said Kay Nord Hunt, attorney to the students.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday for Freakfest 2007, which will sport three stages of live music featuring some nationally-known acts.

Details were announced Tuesday about the revamped Freakfest, which aims to build on the success of last year’s event. As businesses complained that Halloween on State Street had become too rowdy and destructive, city and student groups created Freakfest, a more organized event featuring live bands and a cover charge to get in.

Four entrepreneurs with connections to UW-Madison spoke to students about the three Ms of entrepreneurshipâ??money, marketing and mentorshipâ??Tuesday night at Memorial Union.

People don’t immediately think of State Street as a neighborhood where people live, but Bill Cosh has lived on the street for the past 10 years.

His apartment, in a 38-unit building above Walgreens on the corner of State and Lake streets, sits across from where the popular campus bar Madhatters planned on opening, causing an uproar.

That the bar’s owner decided not to relocate to the bottom of State comes as a big relief to Cosh and others like him.

….(Ted) Gervasi, who could not be reached Tuesday night, told (Alderman Mike) Verveer that he would still like to open Madhatters somewhere in the campus area and that he was going to start a new search for a suitable location.

Two dormitories are under immediate lockdown on the UW campus as police search for an armed robber who went into a UW administration building on Park Street.

Students and staff are asked to stay out of the area around 21 N. Park St., and students in Ogg and Smith halls are asked to find shelter in a safe place.

UW police issued an emergency campus alert at 12:15. People on the street around 21 N. Park should follow on-scene police instructions.

(Since this was written, the situation has been resolved. Fraboni’s Italian Deli was the robber’s target. )

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A couple hundred students jammed into a University of Wisconsin-Madison building Thursday to protest Halliburton Co.’s recruiting at a campus job fair.

The protesters sat in front of the company’s booth, virtually blocking access to the its four recruiters. Engineering student and protest organizer Chris Dols led the group in song.

“I said, ‘From high to low, Halliburton got to go,'” the crowd sang.

The memory of William “Curly” Hendershot is alive and well on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Hendershot was the Dow Chemical Co. recruiter whose 1967 visit here sparked one of the most important protests of the Vietnam War era. A sit-in against the company that made napalm used in Vietnam ended in a bloody clash with police that turned many students into radicals.

On Thursday, students plan to carry signs reading “Curly, off campus!” as they protest a recruiting visit by a company they see as a villain in the war in Iraq: Halliburton Co. Protesters plan to disrupt the company’s visit to an engineering career fair by discouraging students from talking to its representatives.

More than 230 national and international employers will network with UW-Madison students Monday night at the 2007 Fall Career Forum.

….Has there been any research to show what the alcohol industry means to the university in terms of financial support and student employment? If there is any doubt about the city of Madison’s position on the effects of alcohol — check out the Metro bus sporting the full body paint beer ad: “Drink Miller Genuine Draft!!!”

Now I know a suggestion to make the UW campus area a tavern- and alcohol advertising-free zone will be met with all kinds of sensible reasons why the idea is absurd. However, if the city of Madison, state of Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin were serious about the health of the students, and a vegetable, not alcohol, was the source of the ills, I think we would see a unified effort to rid the campus area of the product.

Scott Seyforth: I work for UW-Madison University Housing at four halls — Friedrick, Tripp, Adams and Slichter — as residence life coordinator. UW-Madison has a high population of transfer students and it ‘s my responsibility to coordinate programs at these halls to help students get to know each other and feel comfortable in the learning environment.

Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison continue to go wireless, and show increasing concern over computer security according to the most recent survey of student technology trends.

The report, released this week and conducted online through the school’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT) with about 350 students last spring, shows that more than three quarters (77 percent) of students own a laptop, up from 64 percent in 2006. As a result, reliance on campus wireless network connections increase. Wireless access was up from 30 percent in 2006 to 50 percent in 2007, according to the survey.

Meanwhile, a recent survey of faculty and staff technology trends at UW-Madison revealed that nearly 60 percent use a laptop, more than double the 29 percent in 2006, and 49 percent use a cell phone, up from 20 percent reported last year.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business is unique, say its administrators, for its specialized courses in the second year. Students can focus on disciplines from brand management to entrepreneurship. Some students who responded to the 2007 BusinessWeek survey praised the school for its practical, applied lessons and personalized touches.

The university that produces the most blue chip CEOs and university professors, the most Peace Corps volunteers, and the most productive and long-running patents isn’t Stanford or MIT — it’s the University of Wisconsin.