Category: Campus life

The text message was short and to the point: Possible white male 23 yoa heading towards campus with gun. Avoid campus. This is not a drill.

It wasnâ??t supposed to be a drill, but it turned out it was.

Parkside police received a call from the Kenosha Joint Services dispatch just after 8 p.m. Tuesday, said Dave Buchanan, a university spokesman. That triggered officials to use the universityâ??s new messaging system to issue a warning by phone and by text. The university had just switched to the new system that same day, Buchanan said.

A 21-year-old woman who says she was drugged and sexually assaulted multiple times at a Madison fraternity house last fall has sued the local chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity, its parent organization and the alumni organization that owns the house for negligence.

Madison police continue to investigate the incident, according to a spokesman, but no arrests have been made.

After University of Wisconsinâ??s Associated Students of Madison panicked over a debt of $180,000 owed to the state following the passage of the state budget, Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell stumbled upon a solution just prior to last weekâ??s Board of Regents meeting.

In total, UW-Madison must pay back a total of $2.2 million from University Auxiliary Units, including non-allocable and allocable segregated fees, in order to support financial aid.

A woman using the pseudonym “Jane Doe” is suing the University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity and its national headquarters after she was allegedly drugged and gang raped at a party at the fraternityâ??s Langdon Street house last October.

Her attorney, Robert Elliot, filed a civil lawsuit in Milwaukee County circuit court last week, alleging that the fraternityâ??s negligence caused the womanâ??s injuries and that it failed to create a safe environment. The fraternityâ??s insurer, Risk Management Foundation, was also named as a defendant in the suit.

A lawsuit tells only one side of a story. Phone and e-mail messages left with the Sigma Chi headquarters and the Risk Management Foundation, both based in Evanston, Ill., were not returned Tuesday.

Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow plans to take the University of Wisconsin to a court after a final appeal for funding was rejected by Chancellor Biddy Martin..

CFACT is a conservative campus group that promotes solutions to environmental problems found in the free market, not within the government, according to its mission statement.

This, of course, is not true: Nearly two-thirds of students at Madison are Wisconsin residents. And yet, ask any â??Sconnieâ?â??as the natives are knownâ??and youâ??re sure to hear about the town being overrun by â??Coasties,â? the not-so-affectionate moniker for students from the East Coast and California. In campus lore, these out-of-state invaders even have a uniform: oversized sunglasses, a North Face jacket, spandex pants, and furry UGG bootsâ??no matter the weather. Oh, and her perpetual orange suntan.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison student who told the Badger Herald she was raped multiple times at the Sigma Chi fraternity has now sued both the local chapter and national office, according to a suit filed in Milwaukee Circuit Court.

Marsh Shapiro was incredulous when he read the June 25 letter. The Madison Fire Department wants him to hire an architect to produce floor plans of his restaurant, the Nitty Gritty, so the city can determine the capacities for individual areas: first floor, second floor and patio.

“To me, that’s nothing more than a harassment tactic,” Shapiro says. “I don’t believe it’s a safety issue. I don’t see where anybody’s safety has been jeopardized.”

For Jordan Ludwig, Oct. 31 was just a regular night out with his friends. Until the cops showed up.

Ludwig, then 20, had used his older brother’s ID to get in to Ram Head Ratskeller on Henry Street. He and his friends, who were also underage, quickly left when they saw the cops walk in. About a half a block away, a cop grabbed him from behind.

University of Wisconsin System students who live in residence halls and purchase meal plans could be hit with fee increases averaging $335 this year, budget documents show.

Some students said Wednesday the proposed hikes for student activities, services and room and board seemed excessive during a recession. But one national expert said they are a bargain compared to those in other states and will help pay for improvements.

The University of Wisconsin campus is home this week to the Hip-Hop Institute.

More than 40 teachers and students from across the country are attending the event to learn more about the culture, practices and benefits of hip-hop.

It’s a week-long event aimed at rethinking the genre, organizers said.

Noted: William Workman researched online dating as a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student and also taught classes on how to successfully date using the Internet through the Memorial Union’s Mini Courses, WISC-TV reported.

Police are searching for the suspect, or suspects, who murdered a University of Wisconsin Milwaukee student in the Riverwest neighborhood.

Nathan Potter, 21, was found shot near the corner of North Dousman and West Wright Streets, just east of Humboldt Boulevard. The shooting happened just after 1:00 a.m. Monday.

Look out from Neighborhood House at its Mills Street neighbors and you’ll see the hard-used, bikes-on-the-porch kind of housing that says “college students.”

“We’re surrounded by student housing,” says Zanna Majerle, executive director of the community center that has served Madison’s storied Greenbush area for 93 years. “Our neighborhood has moved away.”

The evolution of the neighborhood poses funding challenges for the center, and its leaders are looking to its location near campus, just a half-mile from Camp Randall Stadium, for a solution.

Tuition would rise more than $600 at UW-Madison under a proposal released Friday to increase tuition at the four-year schools in the University of Wisconsin System.

Tuition would remain unchanged at the systemâ??s 13 two-year colleges.

The recommendation by UW System President Kevin Reilly needs approval from the Board of Regents, which is expected to vote on it Thursday when it meets to approve the annual operating budget.

Tuition would increase about $300 at most of the four-year schools in the University of Wisconsin System and remain unchanged at the system’s 13 two-year colleges under a proposal released Friday.

The recommendation put forth by UW System President Kevin Reilly needs approval from the Board of Regents, who are expected to vote on it Thursday when they meet to approve the annual operating budget.

There are dorms that are popular on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus: Elizabeth Waters, the scenic hall in the center of campus, or the new Ogg, which has air conditioning and walk-in closets.

And then, for whatever reason, there are the ones that arenâ??t. Whether it be Witte, Cole, Kronshage, or another, officials say theyâ??re never sure which dorms will drop to the bottom of the list on any given year, falling victim to the whims of 17- and 18-year-olds.

Word up!

Forty teachers from nine states are gathering next week for a program to discuss the merits of using hip hop in the classroom.

The conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will also address using spoken word as a teaching tool. Spoken word involves telling a story in a lyrical way, much like poetry.

Laura Rortvedt of rural Plymouth is the 2009 Sheboygan County Fairest of the Fair.

Rortvedt, the daughter of Lori and Jeff Rortvedt, is a graduate of Plymouth High School and is a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is majoring in animal science and dairy science.

She could be your best friend. Or she could make your freshman year miserable.

This summer, incoming college freshmen will learn the name of the person with whom they will spend nine months living in a roughly 15-foot by 10-foot dorm room.

The experience is both exhilarating and frightening. Thoughts of independence â?? yes! â?? are followed shortly by questions about who this stranger is, and what sort of irksome idiosyncrasies do they possess?

The UW Hillel Foundation has moved to its new home located at 611 Langdon Street in the heart of the UW Madison campus.

Named after a longtime leader and activist for Jewish causes, The Barbara Hochberg Center for Jewish Student Life offers updated and environmentally-friendly amenities to UW-Madison students, faculty, and the community at large.

As a freshman, I came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus without much direction and with minimal knowledge of who I was or what lay ahead for me.

However, it didnâ??t take long before I began to take great pride in the exciting community and the collective spirit of volunteerism on campus. In particular, I came across the UW Hillel and found that Judaism can be a guide to address ethical and moral issues and face them.

A conservative college group is threatening to sue the University of Wisconsin-Madison, claiming the school wiped out its funding as retaliation against its stance on global warming and other issues.

Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT, promotes the idea that environmental issues are better handled by the free market, not by government interference.

One of its prominent issues is global warming. CFACT national director Bill Gilles called the phenomenon “overblown” and said government responses would be so obtrusive they’d do more harm than good.

While Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed items in the state budget, at least one legislator was protesting a university decision to deny a UW-Madison student group funding.

Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, a group that advocates for smaller government to solve environmental problems, was denied funding last year by a UW-Madison student government committee in charge of doling out student fees.

They were one of a number of groups â?? including Vets for Vets, Engineers Without Borders, the Legal Information Center, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Student Council â?? that lost funding last year because of stricter criteria.

Students with the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a maker of buoyant marsh mats are teaming up to launch two “floating islands” in an experiment to help restore the badly eroded Bayou Bienvenue near New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward.

The floating islands will be launched Tuesday by the students and Floating Islands Inc., a Baton Rouge company.

As a group of university students work on their capstone thesis program this year, the City of Tomah might also benefit from their work.

The Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently requested proposals for community-focused undergraduate and graduate thesis projects. Students in the professional program are required to complete a two-semester service learning senior thesis capstone project. In the fall semester, each student will coordinate between the capstone faculty and a steering committee in a community of their choice to develop a project proposal. Earlier this month, Tomah City Administrator Jim Bialecki applied to include the city in the project.