Skip to main content

Category: Campus life

Indigenous ribbon skirts make a modern statement

Madison Magazine

R​​ibbon skirts — once reserved for ceremonies across many tribal traditions — are showing up in everyday spaces on a new generation of Indigenous women. Miinan White, McKenna Metoxen and Ava Belisle attend the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where they’re building community around the garment. “When I was little, I only had like two or three [ribbon] skirts,” says White, whose mother taught her to sew them. Now White, Metoxen and Belisle are filling their closets.

The three young women all hold leadership positions for Wunk Sheek, a UW–Madison campus organization founded in 1968 that promotes Indigenous identity, culture and history.

Who is Bucky Badger?

Madison Magazine

Each April, the University of Wisconsin–Madison holds tryouts to test which hopefuls are up to the task, both physically and creatively. In a role-playing station, candidates don Bucky’s 35-pound head and respond to various scenarios. In a second station, they improvise a minute-long performance using props.

Trigger warnings in the classroom: Helping or hindering students? UW professor weighs in

The Badger Herald

Halverson-Bascom and Douglas Kelly professor of French Jan Miernowski said he began placing trigger warnings in his course syllabi for two reasons.

For one, Miernowski observed his students placing content warnings in their assigned essays when there is explicit content present. The second reason is that his students reached out saying they were extremely affected by the content of his course books.

Wisconsin football’s 2025 season opener gets moved up

Wisconsin State Journal

The University of Wisconsin football season will start with some history this year.

A shift in the schedule moved the Badgers’ season opener against Miami (Ohio) up to Thursday, Aug. 28 at Camp Randall Stadium, providing the program with its first Thursday regular-season kickoff since 2011. 

Wisconsin Film Festival announces 170 films in 8 days this April

The Cap Times

The Wisconsin Film Festival is presented by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Communication Arts and is now entering its 26th year. Ben Reiser, director of operations, said Madison has supported the festival’s growth.

“The film-going community in Madison has embraced it as a chance to see all these films that you do hear about from other film festivals,” Reiser said, and particularly, “as a chance to see them in movie theaters.”

From the field to the classroom: UW athletes read with Madison second graders

The Daily Cardinal

Student athletes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have visited second grade classrooms in the Madison school district every Monday since September 2024 as part of the Role Model Reading Program, a partnership between the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) and the 2nd & 7 foundation created by Badgers head football coach Luke Fickell.

UW responds to U.S. Department of Education letter demanding educational institutions remove DEI programming

Badger Herald

Amid this uncertainty, UW spokesperson John Lucas said the university remains dedicated to its commitment to DEI in an email statement to The Badger Herald. “UW-Madison is committed to a campus environment that values diversity in both background and viewpoint, and fosters inclusion and belonging for all students, faculty and staff,” Lucas said in the email.

Madison-area theater companies build buzz with Sondheim series

The Capital Times

“A Little Night Music,” featuring a vocal quintet, is University Opera’s choice, running March 14-16 in Shannon Hall. With a story by Hugh Wheeler, the 1973 “Little Night Music” was inspired by an Ingmar Bergman film about an aging actress, Desiree (Madison Barrett), and what happens when her married lovers converge at her mother’s estate for a very dramatic “weekend in the country.”

America is about to enter an apartment crunch

Business Insider

Apartment prices surged most this month in college towns like Syracuse, New York; New Haven, Connecticut; Lexington, Kentucky; Madison, Wisconsin; and Lincoln, Nebraska. Those towns, all of which were in the top 10 of year-over-year rent growth in August, are home to Syracuse University, Yale University, the University of Kentucky, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, respectively.

It’s not time to protest, it’s time to strike

Slate

Peter Rickman is the president of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization now, but in 2011 he was a grad student and a member of the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He remembers it was a Thursday when the governor “dropped the bomb”—which is what Walker himself called his bill dismantling unions. Rickman was in a meeting with other organizers at the time: “We all sort of looked around at one another and were like … this is our fight.” After all, teaching assistants were state employees, too.

John Green discusses tuberculosis, health inequities during Shannon Hall lecture

The Badger Herald

Author John Green visited the University of Wisconsin’s Shannon Hall at Memorial Union on Feb. 18 to talk about the upcoming release of his new book, “Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection.” Green was introduced by professor of pediatrics at UW’s School of Medicine and Public Health Dr. James Conway.