Category: Campus life

The state Building Commission Wednesday added $7.1 million to the Union South replacement budget, bringing the project total to $94.8 million.

University of Wisconsin System Vice President David Miller explained that construction costs have been better identified as the project planning progresses. While a number of cost-cutting alternatives have been considered, including reducing the number of guest rooms from 120 to 60, the project remains above the estimated budget, and further cuts would contradict the student-approved scope of the project funded from $85.7 million in student fees.

District 2 candidate Bridget Maniaci waited with a group of family and friends at Supreme Pizza on Tuesday night, talking excitedly while half-eaten pizza was neglected on the table. One by one, campaign volunteers darted into the near east side restaurant with unofficial vote totals from the district.

By 8:30 p.m., there was only one ward of four left to report, and Maniaci was in second place by 20 votes to candidate Adam Walsh.

….In District 8, which covers most of the University of Wisconsin campus, Bryon Eagon handily won the District 8 primary with 273 votes, while Mark Woulf beat challenger Katrina Flores for the second general election spot by a margin of only seven votes, 117-110.

If you channel-hop local radio stations a lot in the car, you know that feeling of being trapped inside a loopy time warp as yet another ’80s megahit or Pussycat Dolls production gets flogged to death.

Meanwhile, UW-Madison’s student radio station, WSUM/91.7 FM, is guaranteed to have entertaining, unusual and fresh programming throughout the day. Unless, as has been known to happen on occasion, a DJ abandons the studio early to make his biology exam on time.

At first glance, Adam Levin, Andrew Thomas and Tobi Adeoye appear to be average UW-Madison undergrads. Laughing about dorm life, undecided about their majors, they’re notably humble and self-effacing. But unlike many of they’re peers, they’re not viewing graduation as a gateway to the day-to-day grind of the real world.

“My first year out of college, I want to do a year of shows,” says Adeoye, known on stage as Kid Quo. “I want to stretch the music thing, and work with kids and teach them how to express themselves through music.”

UW-Madison students, staff and faculty are taking dangerous steps when ignoring “sidewalk closed” signs along the north side of the Education building on Observatory Drive.

Construction has closed the sidewalk, so pedestrians are using the pavement of Observatory Drive as their walkway.

There’s a tight hairpin curve a short distance down the hill from the Education building, so walkers aren’t always visible to motorists.

If you channel-hop local radio stations a lot in the car, you know that feeling of being trapped inside a loopy time warp as yet another ’80s megahit or Pussycat Dolls production gets flogged to death.

Meanwhile, UW-Madison’s student radio station, WSUM/91.7 FM, is guaranteed to have entertaining, unusual and fresh programming throughout the day. Unless, as has been known to happen on occasion, a DJ abandons the studio early to make his biology exam on time.

Struggles and pain infused the â??hope and changeâ? sentiment last night when students gathered for a Black History Month event at the Red Gym.

University of Wisconsin juniors Keith Jackson and Martinez White have both experienced their share of struggles.

Madison police officers are skeptical they have the adequate processes and staffing in place to respond to every dropped 911 call in which the caller does not pick up on a return call, a policy introduced by Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.

It looks decidedly unacademic â?? a room with a plush couch, a coffee table and a flat screen TV rimmed with candles.

But there it sits, smack in the middle of the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s biomedical engineering department, a room outfitted more appropriately for a living room than an educational building.

Professors and administrators call it the “innovation room,” and its main purpose is to provoke deep thought.

It has long been considered an advantage â?? one might even say necessary â?? for students to think, mull and brainstorm whilst in college.

The final phase of the Dane County 911 Center’s audit that was released Thursday included recommendations for more staffing and more training, and the attorney for the boyfriend of Brittany Zimmermann reacted to the findings Friday.

The audit was ordered by county officials after the alleged mishandling of a 911 call from Zimmerman, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student who was found killed in her downtown Madison apartment last spring.

139,700,000. I know youâ??re going to start processing all those digits. This number reveals the total budget of Wisconsin Union Redevelopment Project (estimated last Dec.), including the construction of a new Union South and renovation of Memorial Union. Surprisingly still, news is pouring in that Union South now is way over budget.

Members of the Madison Police Department and Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, met with residents of Mifflin Street Thursday in an effort to improve the annual Mifflin Street Block Party.

City officials are attempting to put a new face on the Mifflin Street Block Party this year after holding the first of what they hope will be many neighborhood meetings Thursday night to increase the quality and safety of the event.

Ice on Lake Mendota has melted so fast the Statue of Liberty, buried under the ice sheet, is beginning to reappear behind the Memorial Union on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

OK, that’s stretching the truth just a little bit.

But the top of Miss Liberty’s head and her torch-holding arm will be “protruding” through the ice, an homage to the university’s wacky past, serving as a beacon to all attending the annual Hoofers Winter Carnival this weekend on campus.

When this alarm clock wakes you from your slumber, you will hopefully never have cause to glare angrily at it while hitting the snooze button.

Thatâ??s because the Proactive Sleep tool, invented by two University of Wisconsin-Madison students, is smarter than the average alarm clock. It is calibrated to wake people during a light phase in sleep. Thus, the sleepy-head in question feels less groggy, ready to get up and at â??em.

University of Wisconsin officials are scratching their heads as to why their application numbers are down 4.4 percent this year, especially since many admissions officials expected interest in public universities to increase as the economy continued to founder. Even more confounding, applications from out-of-state students actually increased by 211, while the number of in-state prospective students went down at least around 900.

Today some UW-Madison engineering students are putting their homework aside for the University’s annual Innovation Days. The student inventors are vying for thousands of dollars in prize money awarded to the most useful and original devices. Christina Clarkson reports. (Audio, eighth item.)

Chancellor Biddy Martin emphasized the value of the humanities in higher education Wednesday to a group of UW-Madison students, faculty and alumni.

UW-Madison, constrained by state and federal regulations, must provide a studentâ??s name, address and other personal data to any company that wants it, officials said Wednesday.

University of Wisconsin undergraduate admissions for the fall semester have decreased for the first time in five years.

Iraqi students and faculty could begin studying and conducting research at UW-Madison if a burgeoning partnership with Tikrit University is formalized.

Sending UW-Madison students to study in Iraq is not in the immediate plans but could happen in the future if the country stabilizes, said Gilles Bousquet, dean of the Division of International Studies.

Officials from UW-Madison are speaking with U.S. Embassy authorities based in Iraq on Friday to discuss details of the possible relationship.

UW-Madison student Aaron Andrzejak showed up Tuesday afternoon at the Vilas Zoo grinning and bare-armed in a T-shirt.

For the first time in five years, undergraduate applications for fall admission to UW-Madison are on the decline.

The reason why is still unclear, officials said, but it could be related to the slumping economy and a smaller class of high school graduates.

The total number of students who applied to UW-Madison dropped from a record high last year of 25,073 to 24,263 this year.

This past spring no more than 9 percent of the student body at University of Wisconsin-Madison turned out to vote for the student government elections. Participation, in fact, has been low for years — and so have been expectations. Katherine Tondrowski, chair of the Associated Students of Madison’s Elections Commission, admits she’d be “very happy” if even 10 percent of the student body would turn out to vote for a student government election.

Most associated with ASM seem to agree the organization is battling an identity crisis and image problem, and is struggling to remain relevant to the more than 40,000 students on campus.

Unless University of Wisconsin students specifically restrict access to their directory information, businesses such as credit card companies and lenders can get a list of every student’s name, address, phone number and more from the university for a nominal fee.

The ongoing battle between Russell Athletics and Honduran workers continues, and the hundreds of universities like Cornell that are sponsored by Russell are caught in the middle.

The issue â?? which dates back to October 2007 â?? started when Russell Athletics announced it would be closing Jerzees de Honduras, the only solely Russell-owned factory in Honduras. The controversy arose over the ThreadsThreadscontext of the closing: The factory was shut down after 750 of the 1800 workers announced the consolidation of a union on Oct. 5. The leaders of the Union, Moises Elias a Bovado, who was president, and Norma Estela Mejia Castellano, vice president of the union, have been touring campuses nationwide to make their cause heard, and authorities have been listening.

The Corporation for National and Community Service recently recognized UW-Madison for its service to the U.S. community in 2008.

The Wisconsin Union Redevelopment Design Committee announced Monday the first floor of the new Union South has been redesigned to contain restaurants instead of food counters.

STEVENS POINT, Wis. (AP) — The student who died after being found unresponsive in the stairway of a University of Wisconsin-Steven Point dorm was a 19-year-old freshman from Fredonia.

Vice chancellor of student affairs Bob Tomlinson says Andrew Woods may have fallen down some stairs in Thomson Hall early Saturday morning.