Category: Campus life

Rebekah LaFontant will graduate Sunday from Brandeis University. ?It?s kind of bittersweet,?? the New York City native said earlier this week. ?Brandeis is a bubble – it shields you from the real world. Once I leave, I?ll be a real adult.??

University of Wisconsin System officials say more Native Americans are going to college. Their retention and graduation rates however, lag behind the overall student population.

Noted: She has decided to leave the classroom, and is entering the Ph.D. program in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall.

Spring is here! The birds are chirping, the grass is growing, car horns are blaring and tempers are rising all over the UW-Madison campus. Why? It?s move-out time. This annual rite of spring is like a campus tsunami, with 7,000 students juggling finals and moving boxes at the same time. Add in thousands of family members and friends heading to commencements Friday through Sunday at the Kohl Center, across Dayton Street from the southeast campus complex of dorms, and you can understand why this should be called May Madness.

UW-Madison alum Carol Bartz, former chief executive of Yahoo!, will be the commencement speaker at the university?s four graduation ceremonies Saturday and Sunday at the Kohl Center. Bartz, who received her degree in computer science, told UW officials that she missed her own graduation ceremony here in 1971, but will enjoy marking graduation with the class of 2012 instead.

As UW-Madison students prepare for their final week of the semester, its also Move Out Week for students in the dorms.

The UW-Madison student unions will stay open until 3 a.m. on four consecutive days so students can use the unions to study for final exams.

Student parents at the University of Wisconsin have access to programs and services to help them balance the challenges of parenthood with their academic endeavors, but some student parents have said they have trouble at the school.

Late next week, thousands of seniors will graduate from UW-Madison. But for Serra Crawford, this is an especially big triumph as she walks across stage to receive her diploma at only 16 years old.

Students from a UW-Madison program designed to kick-start higher education for economically disadvantaged adults gathered at the Memorial Union Wednesday to celebrate their graduation with a full room of family and friends.

City officials met with Mayor Paul Soglin at a closed meeting Wednesday to determine how the results of this year?s Mifflin Street Block Party will affect the event in the future.

After receiving pressure from student representatives at the public forum held last week to discuss proposed changes to the Madison bus system, Madison Metro Transit System opened up its second meeting Wednesday night to student input.

After University of Wisconsin System students testified on both advisory boards and tuition increases, a special task force recommended all institutions in the UW System develop advisory boards with Board of Regents members.

The iPhone theft craze continued early Sunday morning on West Gorham Street. Madison police said a 20-year-old UW-Madison student had his iPhone stolen while he was texting and sitting on steps outside an apartment building in the 400 block of West Gorham Street.

President Barack Obama talked to students and politicians across the country, including Mayor Paul Soglin and Associated Students of Madison leaders, about the importance of managing federal student loan interest rates on a White House conference call Monday.

In the weeks leading up to former Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz?s speech at commencement, senior class officials and the university have disagreed over the process for selecting future commencement speakers.

This year?s block party resulted in fewer violent crimes this year, but more arrests, according to a report from MPD after the event.

In the weeks leading up to former Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz?s speech at commencement, senior class officials and the university have disagreed over the process for selecting future commencement speakers. The University Committee, made up of six professors and with the help of senior class officials, selects commencement speakers from a pool of notable UW-Madison alumni and local figures. Senior Class President Steven Olikara said this selection process allows the university to obtain speakers without paying them an honorarium, because speakers want to give back to their alma mater. But according to Olikara, this policy needs to change.

Ten years ago, Edgewood College officials struggled to bring minorities to the small liberal arts college. Only one student showed up for the Madison school’s first minority recruitment day in 2000. The next fall, only 11 students of color were part of the roughly 300-student freshman class. But over the past decade that has changed. In the fall, 55 minorities were part of Edgewood College’s freshman class, almost 20 percent of the total.

….Dora E. Zuniga, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County and mom to Edgewood freshman Ariana Silva, said she knows several minority students who enrolled at Edgewood because they didn?t get into UW-Madison, and flourished there. “You have the best of both worlds,” she said. “The kids who end up at Edgewood, because the place down the road doesn?t take them, actually it?s a great service to them because they?re not going to get lost.”

Although approximately 20,000 fewer people attended the Mifflin Street Block Party this year than last, arrests were over ten times as common, according to the Madison Police Department.

During the past year, University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly has led the UW System in the face of $300 million of funding cuts and budgetary lapses. The Badger Herald sat down with Reilly to discuss the impact of these trends and possible solutions being offered. Here are the highlights in part two of a two-part series.

Mixed feelings over this year?s Mifflin Street Block Party stemmed from increased arrests and stricter rules, but an overall safer atmosphere.

There were fewer people and only one report of violence. But the relatively uneventful Mifflin Street Block Party on Saturday did little to dissuade Madison?s top cop that the decades-old event needs to end. An estimated 5,000 people filled porches, homes and yards in a two-block section of West Mifflin Street. Unlike last year?s sponsored event, no drinking was allowed on sidewalks or the street. That resulted in Madison police as of 7:45 p.m. Saturday arresting and citing more than 400 people.

“Be careful,” my fiancée told me as I walked out the door of my downtown apartment, heading to report on the Mifflin Street Block Party. I dismissed the advice and descended on the madness, determined to check out a party that my neighbor, a UW-Madison senior, would be attending. Drunken revelry was in the air well before I reached the iconic 400 block of Mifflin. Students were drinking and blasting music in backyards and porches all along Gorham Street, free of the relentless police surveillance that partygoers on Mifflin had been warned of ad nauseam by city and university officials.

Students and other members of the UW-Madison community told officials Thursday they have concerns with proposed cuts to the campus bus services.

Given the trend of burglaries increasing at the end of the academic year, police in Madison?s southern district are reaching out to residents in student-heavy areas, telling them to take extra precautions against theft.

Throughout its history of more than 40 years, the Mifflin Street Block Party has been considered a Madison tradition by many, but now others are calling for a drastic change to the event?s stigma.

The time has come for the much awaited and much debated 2012 Mifflin Street Block Party, when students and residents from throughout the region will be met with a very different atmosphere than in previous years.

Students and other members of the UW-Madison community told officials Thursday they have concerns with proposed cuts to the campus bus services. UW Transportation Services Director Patrick Kass said Transportation Services is currently operating in a deficit and needs to cut about 10 percent of the bus services to help balance its budget. Proposed cuts could include combining services on routes 80 and 85 or eliminating half of the route 81 trips while also eliminating half of the route 85 trips after 10 a.m.