Category: Campus life

MADISON (WKOW) — It?s moving week on campus and Wednesday, many students have made it to their new homes. Between traffic, moving trucks and a lot of belongings, it can be a struggle along the way, but a UW conservation program is helping people on the move. “Donate and Take” is a tent full of stuff that people want to get rid of– for people who need that stuff. It?s an opportunity that means fewer items will head to the curb. UW-Madison senior Andy Bose came up with the idea for “Donate and Take.”

Using data from every mouse click a student makes doing online course work, researchers from three University of Wisconsin institutions hope to identify students at risk of doing poorly and potentially dropping out of school. The goal of the project by the University of Wisconsin Colleges, UW-Madison and UW-Platteville is to help more students succeed.

As summer is coming to a close and as we all start the grind of new schedules, early mornings and school days, the questions are looming; “How was your summer?” and “What did you do?” Buffalo Grove resident Pam Selman will have a lot to share about her summer break as a White House intern. 

Black youth from the Madison area will be learning about police work in a good way this week. The inaugural Black Youth Career Police Academy is being held Aug. 16 to 18 at two locations, the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County and the Madison Police Department Training Center, with kids getting immersed in what officers do, and possibly looking at careers they might not have thought of. Madison officers will be helped by the Fitchburg and UW-Madison police departments and the Dane County Sheriff?s Office.

He breaks up street fights; he saves hapless women from speeding taxis; he?s the social-minded movie star with the Obama T-shirt and sad puppy-dog eyes who once said, ?It?s misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman?s sexual presentation of self.? He?s Ryan Gosling, and, thanks in large part to one graduate student?s Tumblr, he?s basically a feminist icon.

Before incoming freshmen actually step on to campus, many get their first assignment: a “common read.” Colleges and universities assign the same book for freshmen to read over the summer and follow it up with a discussion once the get to school.

The future of the state of Wisconsin was on display at the UW-Madison PEOPLE Program?s 12th annual Recognition Banquet at the Madison Marriott West Aug. 3. The future looks very promising.

Madison firefighters were busy early Sunday fighting dumpster blazes at two student apartment buildings, with a dozen dumpsters destroyed and siding melted off the buildings. Flames were shooting 20 feet high, and melted siding went up three stories, according to a news release from the Madison Fire Department. The first fire was early Sunday at 12:19 a.m. in the rear of a 32-unit apartment building at 118 N. Brooks St., next to the Southwest Commuter Bike Path.

A few days before thousands of Downtown leases expire next week, neighborhoods around the UW-Madison campus were already filled with hallmarks of the annual August migration Friday. There were the rental trucks packed with furniture and SUVs hauling trailers loaded up with mattresses. There were the tenants and their friends or family helping fill cars in front of apartments and homes. There was also, as always, the waste.

It wasn?t until after their son?s death on Oct. 24, 2010, that Dan and Deb Ellefson knew much about text messaging. What they learned, in the hardest way possible, was that drivers who read and send text messages can be at least as dangerous as drunken drivers, and that young people ? who use text messaging obsessively ? are woefully ignorant of the hazards it poses. “Everybody texts and the general feeling is, especially among young people, they?re texting and driving and they think that?s perfectly OK, they think they?re being safe,” Dan Ellefson said. “But the truth is they?re not. It?s extremely dangerous.”

Scrap metal thieves looking for an easy score this week might be heading to the UW-Madison campus area to scoop up things left curbside by moving students, but the city said leave it be or you could be fined. The Madison Streets Division and Police Department are planning to patrol the streets in and around campus, looking for people taking bed frames, bikes, appliances and other metal items off the curb.

The future of the state of Wisconsin was on display at the UW-Madison PEOPLE Program?s 12th annual Recognition Banquet at the Madison Marriott West Aug. 3.

As UW-Madison students get ready to move next week, Goodwill wants to make it easier for them to donate their unwanted clothes, computer equipment and more.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is maintaining its reputation as one of the nation?s top party schools.

Coming soon: moving madness. This year?s annual mid-August churn of students moving on up from one apartment to another brings with it some changes, mainly in how stuff is junked.

Police are increasing their patrols in downtown Madison after seeing the number of random acts of violence rise.

WHITEWATER, Wis.-The search for answers continues after a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student?s body was found in a quarry last weekend.

A UW-Madison African Studies professor was charged Wednesday with lewd and lascivious behavior for allegedly exposing himself last month to a student near campus, who, it turned out, had taken one of his classes. Kennedy A. Waliaula, 47, of Madison, an assistant professor of African languages and literature, was charged with the misdemeanor for allegedly exposing his genitals to the woman as he walked past her on North Charter Street mid-afternoon on July 10, according to a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court.

A Sun Prairie woman was convicted Friday of homicide by negligent driving after a jury found she was writing a text message when she slammed into a UW-Madison student as he stood behind his broken-down car on East Johnson Street in 2010. The jury of seven women and five men apparently rejected Stephanie Kanoff?s contention that she was driving behind a car that had blocked her view of Dylan Ellefson?s car and the brightly-clad Ellefson, 21, who was wearing a Halloween costume to work at Hot Topic in the East Towne Mall.

The Madison Police Department is boosting the number of weekend officers patrolling the area around State Street, including the 600 block of University Avenue that has been plagued by a series of violent incidents.

A jury could decide Friday whether a Sun Prairie woman was distracted by writing a text message before she struck and killed a UW-Madison student at his disabled car on an East Side street in 2010. Testimony in the case of Stephanie Kanoff, 21, who is charged with homicide by negligent driving, will wrap up Friday as Kanoff?s lawyers try to convince a jury that she was not writing a text message while driving before she struck Dylan Ellefson, 21.

Madison is moving to impose new parking rules on mopeds and motor scooters to address concerns about safety, blocked sidewalks, aesthetics and ruined grass on terraces. Meanwhile, UW-Madison, the city?s moped epicenter, is raising moped parking permit prices and changing its program to encourage users to park in one spot and take buses or walk around campus.

More and more across the nation, universities are recognizing that the youth of a spoken word and hip-hop generation really have a lot to offer. And the University of Wisconsin-Madison has prided itself on being on the cutting edge of realizing that trend.

Stephanie Kanoff?s lawyer and Dane County prosecutors agreed that she made calls and sent text messages on her cellphone as she drove home from work on Oct. 24, 2010. But as jurors heard during opening statements in Kanoff?s negligent homicide trial, they differ on whether she was working on one last text message when she struck and killed UW-Madison student Dylan Ellefson, 21, whose car was disabled in the 1400 block of East Johnson Street.

David disappeared 10 years ago this past Sunday, but what has happened in the decade since is a journey that can be documented. It?s extraordinary, but it happened all the same. It?s still happening, in a way. It was pretty well summed up this week by David?s father, retired UW-Madison philosophy professor Mike Byrd, who said: “One way of confronting this is to expand who you love.” Mike and his wife, Maggie Felker ? a Madison nurse and David?s mother ? have embraced the country where their son spent his final months….For his part, Mike felt the need to retire from his UW-Madison position and find something “intensely meaningful.” There is something profound in how he, and Maggie, too, found it at the center in Quito. “It’s a place of hope,” Mike said. “It radiates out to everybody.”