Category: Campus life

The student government voted unanimously to create a Student Ad Hoc Committee to advise a university committee on diversity issues in a meeting Wednesday.

Funding has been approved for an atheist organization at the UW-Madison. A committee at UW-Madison made the decision. Student fees will go towards funding it. 

A University of Wisconsin-Madison committee has approved using student fees to fund an atheist organization.

A UW-Madison committee has approved using student fees to fund an atheist organization. Chris Calvey is president of the group, Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics. Calvey says it?s about time secular students got the support they deserve. The university?s Student Services Finance Committee recently approved about $67,000 to fund the group in the next academic year.

University of Wisconsin-Madison leaders will evaluate a request by a university committee to put Palermo Villa Inc. on notice unless it meets certain demands regarding a labor dispute involving the Milwaukee pizza manufacturer.

The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has received a $50,000 grant to help incoming students who need remedial math courses.

A University of Wisconsin building was evacuated yesterday morning in response to a suspected gas leak. 

In continuation of the Shared Governance Week of Action, University of Wisconsin?s student government hosted a Transportation Forum, in effort to both educate the community as well as gain feedback for the future of campus transportation.

To prevent pedestrians from jaywalking, members of the Madison Police Department Traffic Enforcement Safety Team were positioned on the corner of Park St. and Johnson St. on Tuesday to educate pedestrians on correct procedures for crossing busy intersections. Madison Metro brought the issue of jaywalking to the team?s attention after becoming frustrated with pedestrians bringing traffic to a standstill, according to MPD TEST Sgt. Eric Tripke.

Incoming UW System students lagging in math skills got a big boost with the announcement of a new online course that has the potential to get more students to graduate in less time and at lower cost. A $50,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be used at UW-La Crosse to develop a new “massive open online course,” or MOOC, that will give students the chance to improve their math skills without having to take remedial high school level courses in college. The MOOC will be free of charge and available to everyone.

Streakers have long galloped across college campuses in the altogether, making it difficult for successive generations of crazies to outdo their predecessors. Originality can be hard to find. Enter UW-Stout, where a brave young buck last week put a new twist on the old tradition.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison was named among the top 10 universities in the nation Monday for the number of students studying abroad for 2010-?11 academic year, according to the 2012 Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange.

The University of Wisconsin Law School launched a new free legal clinic for veterans Thursday.

Life after war leads many veterans to college. The number of student-veterans served by the University of Wisconsin System has increased over 200% since the Wisconsin GI Bill was enacted in 2005. But the more than 5,000 veterans now on UW campuses still account for less than 3% of the total student population, according to UW officials.

The  Board of Regents heard from experts on various important issues including the skills gap and student veterans in a meeting Thursday afternoon.

Starting Monday, Madison Metro will begin to enforce an existing policy in effort to address the growing issue of bus pass fraud within the city.

When UW-Madison students arrive on campus, they are greeted with a wide array of resources to make their time at the university as productive and comfortable as possible. Arguably, some of the most helpful yet underutilized of these resources are the Madison city alders. When this editorial board met with alder Scott Resnick recently, we were welcomed with a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of the city. Resnick exemplifies many characteristics that foster a productive relationship between the city and its constituents. Students and the city alike would benefit from more involvement from individuals with Resnick?s dedication and initiative in city politics.

Turns out there is a limit to unlimited free bus rides.

Metro Transit bus drivers will begin next week checking identification of riders using unlimited ride passes. Without the ID that connects the user with the pass, the pass will be confiscated and deactivated.

Beginning Monday, students using their unlimited-rides bus pass will have to show their WisCards to bus drivers when boarding Metro Transit vehicles that require the swipe of a pass to board. Madison Metro Transit announced in a press release Wednesday an initiative to enforce the rule already codified on the back of the Associated Students of Madison bus pass students receive, saying fraudulent use of the passes could threaten future pass programs.

Despite concerns young voters would not turn out in big numbers to re-elect Barack Obama as president Tuesday, early statistics suggest the youth voter turnout nationally mirrors the huge numbers from 2008. However, the numbers this time around suggest Obama received a significantly lower proportion of these votes. Forty-nine percent of voters in the 18-29 age group showed up to vote in Tuesday?s presidential election, compared to 51 percent in 2008, according to statistics released Wednesday from Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, a nonpartisan, independent, academic research center that studies young people in politics.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents will meet to discuss how to provide better services to student veterans.

Dodging the first snowflakes of the season, many first-time voters turned out at Gordon Commons on the UW-Madison campus Tuesday to cast their ballots. The question of how they came to such an important decision for the first time yielded a variety of answers and, surprisingly, not one of them included campaign ads as a means of persuasion.

Registration measures and few reported problems helped move voting along smoothly on an Election Day that drew crowds of students whose votes largely reflected the end results of the election.

The State-Langdon Neighborhood Association gathered in a meeting Monday night to provide input on a controversial apartment proposal.

Thousands of Wisconsinites from Madison and surrounding areas packed Martin Luther King Blvd. Monday morning as early as 5:30 a.m. when doors opened to the Obama and Springsteen rally. But the large crowd is made up of mostly families, both young and old, with children ranging from infancy to high school seniors. There is a low turnout of University of Wisconsin-Madison students. UW-Madison Pharmacy student Renee Liebe said she skipped class to come to the rally, because she missed Obama?s Oct. 4 rally on Bascom Hil.

The Madison Police Department arrested a suspect in connection to an apartment burglary Friday morning.

Children as young as 9 are learning how to program in a computer class at the Madison Children?s Museum. The class, which was designed for students ages nine to 13, uses the Scratch software developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. Through the software program, children can create their own interactive stories, games, music and animation. Three UW-Madison students have been working with the dozen younger students in the class as part of a service-learning course.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School will launch a new Veterans Law Center Thursday to provide legal assistance to veterans in the Madison area. The law center is funded by a $5,000 Pro Bono Initiative Grant from the State Bar Legal Assistance committee. The center was created by a partnership between the UW-Madison Law School?s Pro Bono Program, the Dane County Bar Association, Porchlight, Inc. and William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital representatives.

A University of Wisconsin student suffered several facial fractures after being attacked on Langdon Street early Thursday morning.

A neighborhood meeting Thursday welcomed student resident participation and introduced proposals for two development projects.

At about 2 a.m. Thursday, a 20-year-old man was knocked unconscious after yelling at a passing car alleged to be driving recklessly.

One man was beaten to unconsciousness and another man suffered cuts to his face and hands after others broke windows at a campus-area house party near Camp Randall Stadium, Madison police said.

The University of Wisconsin Police Department worked in association with Safe Communities last night to stop bicyclists without bicycle lights in an effort to promote campus safety.