More than five months after Joel Marino was stabbed to death in his Monona Bay home, neither police nor prosecutors have said what accused killer Adam Peterson’s motive was in the crime.
It’s not clear how soon that information will be forthcoming. Peterson, 20, is due in court for a status conference on Wednesday, July 9, to decide how the case should move forward.
Details about the case have come out slowly, even after Peterson’s arrest on June 26.
Over time, more and more people started questioning if anything less than complete funding is any way to reward those who had put their lives at risk to serve their country.
Elizabeth O’Herrin, executive director of Student Veterans of America, noted that the Montgomery GI Bill — which provides education funding for those who have served in the military at any point since July 1, 1985 — was created during a relatively peaceful time, near the end of the Cold War.
“There was a feeling that the Montgomery GI Bill wasn’t a sufficient education benefit — especially when one considers what service we are now asking of our military since the advent of the war” in Iraq, said O’Herrin, a 2007 UW-Madison graduate and a member of the Wisconsin Air National Guard.
MADISON, Wis. — The former University of Wisconsin student charged with the killing of Joel Marino will not waive his right to a preliminary hearing, according to his attorney.
Lawyers on Wednesday will set a date to determine whether there’s probable cause to put Adam Peterson on trial on a murder charge.
Peterson’s attorney, Dennis Burke, said that hearing will likely be set for the week after next, WISC-TV reported.
The University of Wisconsin regularly plays host to numerous distinguished speakers, writers and performers. For a city so historically associated with activism and progressive politics, few are as good a fit as the Amiri Baraka, who spoke on Monday at the Wisconsin Union Theatre. His talk kicked off the Third Annual Spoken Word & Hip Hop Educatorâ??s Institute at the university organized by the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) and Youth Speaks Wisconsin in association with Urban Word NYC.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin changed the way it distributed football tickets to students this year from a first-come, first-serve basis to a general lottery system.
Last year, under the first-come, first-serve system, tickets old out in three days, but the new system has left some students upset and without tickets in hand.
The new lottery system takes all student control out of the system, leaving the decision of who gets tickets up to a lottery.
Students applied months ago for the lottery and got the results on Monday.
(STATEWIDE) At least two U-W System schools are expecting record enrollment for this fall, and are trying to figure out where those extra students will sleep.
Last year about 1300 freshmen enrolled at U-W River Falls, creating a 200-bed shortage in its residence halls. Alan Tuchtenhagen, Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Services, says his staff will soon discuss just where to put this yearâ??s batch of freshmen. He adds that while first and second-year students are required to live on-campus, even upperclassmen are staying in dorms, which he attributes to the economy. (Fourth item.)
(UNDATED) Much of the health insurance debate is about Americans who have inadequate coverage or none at all. On college campuses across the U.S, the focus is increasingly on who pays the bill: students, through segregated fees……or mom and dad, through private insurance.
Currently, when U-W students need medical care, they can go to their campus health center. There’s usually no “bill” per se â?? the expense is folded into the segregated fees paid along with tuition. And there’s also comprehensive, campus-sponsored health insurance available.
However, at a small but growing number of schools, the private market has come into play. The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, for instance, contracts with four area insurance providers. It’s a trend that Dr. Sarah Van Orman of University Health Services in Madison predicts will expand across the nation as colleges tighten their belts. (Third item.)
The Big Ten Network announced Monday that Wednesday would be a “Wisconsin Day” on the channel with 3 1/2 hours dedicated to University of Wisconsin-Madison programming, including conversations with renowned alumni and features about student life.
Women’s hockey coach, former Badger hockey player and Olympic gold medal winner Mark Johnson leads off at 8 a.m. on the alumni program “Wisconsin Reflections.” He will be joined by several former teammates, including UW men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves.
The UW programming ends at 4 p.m. with a documentary on the First Wave Spoken Word and Urban Arts Learning Community at UW-Madison. “First Wave- An Unfiltered Story” profiles several talented undergraduates who are part of the only collegiate spoken word/hip-hop theater program in the country.
Young dancers who dream of making a career in the field got a taste of the experience at Dance Millennium, a week-long summer program at UW-Madison.
“We ‘re treating them as professionals, ” said Karen McShane-Hellenbrand, Dance Millennium director. “It also sort of doubles as a pre-college experience. “
Preliminary findings from an autopsy Monday indicate that University of Wisconsin student Hao Yu, 19, who was found dead in an Eagle Heights apartment Sunday, died of natural causes, the Dane County Coroner’s Office said.
Coroner John Stanley said the autopsy indicated Yu’s death “did not involve trauma and was consistent with a natural manner of death.”
An Associated Press analysis of federal records found that 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available. The number of alcohol-poisoning deaths per year nearly doubled over that span, from 18 in 1999 to a peak of 35 in 2005, though the total went up and down from year to year and dipped as low as 14 in 2001.
MADISON, Wis. — A University of Wisconsin student from China was found dead on Sunday night at a campus-area apartment, according to UW police.
Officers responded to an emergency call at an Eagle Heights apartment, but the victim was already dead.
The student, identified as Hao Yu, was a guest at the apartment.
The Dane County Coroner has identified the UW student found dead Sunday night at the Eagle Heights apartment complex as 19-year old Hao Yu. Police say Yu was from China and was staying at a guest at the apartment.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison police tell 27 News they found Yu’s body around 10:00 p.m. Sunday night. The coroner says preliminary autopsy results show Yu likely died of natural causes and foul play is not suspected.
MADISON — The Dane County Coroner has identified the UW student found dead Sunday night at the Eagle Heights apartment complex as 19-year old Hao Yu. Police say Yu was from China and was staying at a guest at the apartment.
Help college students with child care, says the Appleton Post-Crescent.
We know Wisconsin is lagging in college graduation rates. Only about 25 percent of adults age 25 or older in the state hold a bachelor’s degree, compared with 30 percent in Minnesota. The national average is about 27 percent.
The state will subsidize child care for full-time college students — but only for two years — while low-income parents working full time can receive unlimited day care assistance.
A University of Wisconsin student was pronounced dead Sunday night after campus police responded to an emergency call from an Eagle Heights apartment.
The cause of death of the man was not yet known, but police said they do not suspect foul play. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday morning.
The man was a guest at the apartment. UW Police officials said the man’s identity is known, but will not be released until his family is notified.
While police say Adam Charles Peterson stabbed a stranger to death in late January, those who grew up with the 2006 Stillwater Area High School graduate find it difficult to believe he was capable of such a violent act.
Still, the 20-year-old now faces a first-degree murder charge in Madison, Wis., where authorities say Peterson’s DNA was matched to samples found on the knife that was used to kill 31-year-old Joel Marino in his Madison home on Jan. 28, and on a backpack and cap that were found near the scene of the crime.
For a talk he gave this week to a group of high-achieving high school students on the UW-Madison campus, Kevin Strang showed up dressed more casually than his audience members – running shoes, blue jeans and a polo shirt.
This is the way he likes it. “The Man wears a suit and tie, right?” he said.
At Marquette, the Milwaukee School of Engineering, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison, the percentage of women with undergraduate degrees in the field has declined or stayed static since 1998. Twenty percent of engineering graduates from Madison were women in 2006-’07, while UWM graduated just 6% women that year – a big drop from previous years.
Ex-Marine and University of Wisconsin-Madison junior Jake Warner gets a monthly check for $1,185, enough to cover his living expenses ($510 for rent $250 necessities) plus four 30-packs of Miller High Life. But, he says, â??you canâ??t survive off just the GI Bill.â? After financial aid, his tuition bill ends up around $2,000 a semester. He tutors a seventh grader to make up the difference.
The shock over Adam Peterson ‘s arrest Thursday in the murder of Joel Marino was especially great among the people he grew up with in the Stillwater, Minn. area, who said they never thought he was capable of such violence.
A former college student charged in a home-invasion slaying in Wisconsin five months ago has been arrested in Washington County, authorities said today.
Adam C. Peterson, 20, was arrested Thursday about 7:30 a.m. without incident at the Grant home of his mother, where he recently moved from Madison, Wis., the Washington County Sheriff’s Office sai
A University of Wisconsin-Madison dropout from Minnesota was charged Friday with a high-profile stabbing death, one of several unsolved cases that had frightened city residents.
MADISON, Wis. — A 20-year-old Minnesota man was formally charged on Friday with first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the fatal stabbing of Madison resident Joel Marino last January.
Adam Charles Peterson, who’s currently a resident of Grant, Minn., was arrested on Thursday in Minnesota, according to Madison police.
During a Friday morning news conference, Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said that Peterson is a former Madison resident who had multiple addresses in the area. He said that Peterson was a University of Wisconsin-Madison student, but wasn’t an active student at the time of killing.
DNA extracted from the handle of the knife that killed Joel Marino, along with hairs found on a backpack and knit cap, tied a former UW-Madison student to Marino’s death on Jan. 28, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday.
Adam C. Peterson, 20, of Grant, Minn., was charged with first-degree intentional homicide for allegedly stabbing Marino, 31, to death at his home on West Shore Drive.
Itâ??s hard to miss the glow from emergency phone kiosks on campus these days.
Nor can families of incoming freshman easily evade required seminars or orientation programs discussing campus safety and emergency protocol.
For the most part, campuses are safe, educational havens.
But, in the wake of the tragic killing of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student this year, new discussions on improving emergency communication have erupted.
Itâ??s natural. Itâ??s good.
In a signal that more copyright infringement lawsuits could be coming against students in the UW System, the Recording Industry Association of America filed a lawsuit in federal court in Madison Wednesday seeking the names of people it believes illegally downloaded music at UW facilities.
The John Doe lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Madison by the RIAA, seeks the identities of 48 people who were monitored downloading copyrighted music over Internet-based file-sharing networks in 2007 and 2008.
When first-year UW-Madison law students arrived in Anuj Desai’s constitutional law class last semester, he told them to shut their laptop computers and next time, leave them at home.
The directive may have come as a surprise to students who are used to having a keyboard â?? and the Internet â?? at their fingertips in class.
From semester to semester, Josh Bousquette doesn’t know if he’ll get a bill for $12,000 or a monthly paycheck in the mail.
It all depends on whether the UW-Madison graduate student manages to find funding as a teaching assistant or research assistant. If he gets funding, his out-of-state tuition of about $25,000 a year is covered, and he’s got a job that pays for most of his living expenses.
….Increasingly, graduate students at UW-Madison are scrambling to get their hands on scarce and meager funding, especially those studying humanities. Even students lucky enough to come in with guaranteed teaching or research positions must work for some of the lowest salaries within the UW’s peer institutions.
With the presidential election officially down to two major party candidates, supporters of Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are turning their attention to strategies for winning over key constituencies. When it comes to one target group â?? students on college campuses â?? both campaigns see significant opportunities, but challenging barriers, too.
MADISON, Wis. — While the police investigation continues, Monday marks the one-year anniversary when University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan disappeared from downtown Madison. The 22-year-old was later found dead.
The search for the missing Waunakee native began last summer. Nolan was reported missing on June 23, 2007, after a night of partying in downtown Madison. Her body was found on July 9, 2007, in a wooded area near Schneider Drive in the Town of Dunn.
The concrete canoe competition is simple: Design and build a concrete canoe that can float and withstand the wear and tear of numerous races.
This year the University of Nevada, Reno, won first place, putting an end to the five-year winning streak by the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
A mass of proud parents, friends and attorneys paraded through the state Supreme Court for the swearing in of more than 130 University of Wisconsin Law School graduates earlier this month.
However, the law school holds its public ceremony almost a month after graduation and approximately half of the class did not attend on June 11.
So where were the 126 other graduates from the spring 2008 class?
Assistant Dean for External Communications Carolyn Lazar Butler said there are a variety of reasons, both deliberate and inadvertent, as to why graduates miss the opportunity to be sworn in among their peers.
At some point during one of the 26 interviews Jake Gardiner had with representatives of NHL teams over two days at the league’s scouting combine earlier this month, things got a little heated.
“They were asking me tough questions, one team was, and I kept saying, ‘I don’t know,'” said Gardiner, an incoming University of Wisconsin recruit and a projected first-round NHL draft pick. “And the scout was like, ‘Well, you seem not to know about much. Are you dumb? Are you stupid or what’s going on here?'”
The UW Foundation announced Thursday it’s launching a money-raising campaign focused on financial help for undergraduates and keeping talented professors and graduate students at UW-Madison.
Donors are invited to channel their contributions to those needs or designate them for an east campus gateway plan as the university undertakes major renovations, additions and building projects.
The drive is called “Great People. Great Place.” It’s aimed at nurturing human capital and bolstering the profile of a vital academic neighborhood, the university said.
Following a number of high-profile crimes at some state university campuses, administrators are trying to ease the fears of parents whose students are going off to college in the fall. Parents and students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee can now sign up for emergency text alerts on their cellphones. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a similar service for students but not parents.
MANITOWOC â?? Brian Backhaus wants to take a bite out of Silver Lake Park’s restoration balance, and he’s willing to travel 3,500 miles to do so.
Backhaus, a town of Newton native and junior forestry student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, leaves Saturday on a cross-country bicycle trip he hopes will raise $15,000 for the park. The 25-year-old is accepting pledges by the mile or in lump sums.
His route weaves from Wisconsin to Massachusetts before he boards a train for Oregon and pedals back home to the Dairy State. He set aside 60 days for the journey and hopes to average about 60 miles per day. He expects to reach Massachusetts by July 11.
The Public Safety Communications Center Board decided Wednesday afternoon to change their policy, and dispatch law enforcement to 911 calls coming from cell phones, even if the dispatcher can’t determine whether there’s an emergency or not.
911 Center policies came to light after the murder of UW student Brittany Zimmermann in April. A review found Zimmermann made a call to 911 the day she was murdered but the call dropped, and the dispatcher did not send police officers to the area, or call back as required.
Following a slew of high-profile crimes at some of the state’s college campuses, university leaders are trying to ease the fears of parents whose students will be going off to college in the fall.
The parents of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann have asked to join a lawsuit filed by media groups seeking the release of 911 tapes related to their daughter’s death because they have been denied copies of the tapes.
Hiring students for the summer can be mutually beneficial. Students can apply their training to real business challenges and you, as a business owner, will discover talent that is locally available and reasonably priced.
Worn-out high school seniors are getting fresh encouragement from a range of sources to take a break â?? a “gap year” â?? before plunging into college. But to be beneficial, it needs to involve more than rest and relaxation.
This spring, high schools in seven metropolitan areas hosted their first gap-year fairs to acquaint students with options for spending a year away from the academic treadmill. Earlier in the year, Princeton University announced plans to formalize a “bridge year” program for admitted students to do service work abroad before enrolling.
Nick Winter was watching a friend play video games in a Beijing apartment when the idea came to him: Could the technology that translated jabs of a digital stylus into on-screen movements help students learn to write and recognize Chinese characters?
As a mathematics, computer-science, and East Asian-studies major at Oberlin College, he knew firsthand the laborious task of memorizing hundreds of basic Chinese characters. A computer program that incorporated both handwriting recognition and self-testing, he thought, might help students, especially those just starting out.
La Crosse will continue to shelve any efforts to limit drink specials, despite a May Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that shut down price fixing charges against Madison taverns.
The cityâ??s Alcohol Oversight Committee agreed this week to wait out the verdict in a corresponding lawsuit filed in federal district court.
Local officials said they didnâ??t want to invite a lawsuit by eliminating drink specials or encouraging taverns to do so before the federal court has its say.
The unsolved murder of a college student in Madison, a string of robberies near Marquette University and a recent spike in assaults at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have some parents packing summer orientation sessions at local colleges, anxious about studentsâ?? safety.
Colleges, in turn, are trying to ease those fears while helping parents take an active role
The parents of a slain University of Wisconsin-Madison student want authorities to release the 911 call she made before she was murdered.
Kevin and Jean Zimmermann want to intervene in a lawsuit brought by media groups seeking audio of the call from Brittany Zimmermann’s cell phone.
The trailer for sleeper hit sci-fi movie Zero Trooper F has just landed online.
The film wowed audiences at the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival in late April — even though it was shot by a group of students for under a grand.
MADISON, Wis. — The dormitories on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will soon be following the trend of other college campuses around the state in ditching their landline phones.
After an extensive two years of surveying students on their phone usage habits, university officials said that the $400,000 a year to operate the phones isn’t necessary. They said that about 98 percent of students rely on their cell phone instead of their free dorm phone.
Well, here we are again. In November 2004, Madison Magazine columnist John Roach issued a negative opinion piece titled “The State of State.” In the January 2005 issue of the magazine I responded. Now in the May 2008 edition Roach attacks the downtown again (“A Safer Madison”). It too requires a response.
Quoted: Nick Nowakowski, 19, a pre-med student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talks about the possibilities of going pro on the competitive video gaming circuit.
On a blessedly rain-free Friday afternoon, two dozen or so friends and neighbors of slain UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan’s family gathered under a gazebo at Centennial Park in Waunakee to mark the upcoming one-year anniversary of her disappearance and death.
Kelly Nolan, 22, disappeared in the early hours of June 23, 2007, about one month after moving to Madison, after a night of partying on State Street with friends. Her body was found in Fitchburg on July 9 after a massive search.
UW-Whitewater ‘s popularity among high school seniors has increased significantly in recent years, with applications up about 10 percent from last year.
Overall applications to the rest of the UW System, including UW-Madison, increased slightly.
Until a few months ago, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay freshman Kate Higgins was a rarity: Unlike an estimated 88% of college students in the country, she didnâ??t have a cell phone.
Kate Higgins, 18, of Milwaukee, checks her e-mail Thursday at the Wauwatosa Public Library. A laptop and cell phone became necessities for Higgins while at UW-Green Bay, where landlines in dormitories will be disconnected this fall.
Higgins, 18, kept in touch with her family in Milwaukee the old-fashioned way â?? a call home once a week from the landline in her on-campus apartment.
But last winter, Higgins heard the news: The university would soon disconnect landlines in residence halls and use the savings to pay for something more useful, like wireless Internet.
Hey, high school graduates. Quit texting and listen up. Todd Hanson, lead writer of The Onion, has some advice for you.
“Get ready to start suffering,” Hanson told nearly 500 students at Madison West High School’s graduation ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Kohl Center.
Hanson later reneged on that statement and admitted “unbelievable, wonderful things are also going to happen to you,” but not before sharing his own personal suffering with the graduating class.
It’s time to go. I spent the past four months dreading this moment. School had become comfortable, and I didn’t want to leave. I had class only two days a week, and my day started at 2:30 p.m. Life was easy, and I didn’t want to go back to the real world. Now I can say I’m happy the time has come. It is time to move on, time to be a grown-up again, time to step into the unknown, time to continue to grow
MILWAUKEE â?? The family of a murdered University of Wisconsin-Madison student has filed a federal lawsuit against Dane County and the 911 operator who handled a call from the student’s cell phone.
Kevin and Jean Zimmermann of Marshfield claim negligence by the county and 911 operator Rita Gahagan contributed to their daughter’s death two months ago.
MADISON, Wis. — The family of a slain University of Wisconsin-Madison student is suing Dane County and the 911 operator who handled a call from the woman’s cell phone.
Kevin and Jean Zimmermann are the parents of Brittany Zimmermann, a 21-year-old killed in her Madison apartment on April 2.
The federal lawsuit filed Friday alleges that operator Rita Gahagan took Brittany Zimmermann’s 911 call but lost contact with her, then failed to call back as required or send police to investigate.
The suit requests a jury trial and seeks unspecified damages.
The family of Brittany Sue Zimmermann, a UW-Madison student who was killed in her downtown apartment in April, will file suit against Dane County and one of its former emergency dispatchers Friday in U.S. District Court, according to preliminary papers filed.
Zimmermann, 22, made a 911 call on her cell phone before her death, but the call was disconnected, and the dispatcher did not call her back. No police officer was sent to Zimmermann’s home until after her death.
No one has been arrested in the case.
Friends and family of Kelly Nolan will hold a memorial service for the young woman from Waunakee who was found murdered almost a year ago.
Nolan, 22, disappeared early in the morning on June 23, 2007, after bar-hopping with friends in downtown Madison the night before. Her body was discovered two weeks later on July 9 in the town of Dunn.
Her murder remains unsolved.
The financial credit crisis is squeezing student loan programs that offer breaks to borrowers who enter critical fields such as nursing and teaching.
In at least six states this year, state-affiliated lenders have dropped or scaled back programs. Some repay or forgive part of a federal student loan for borrowers who take jobs in specific fields. Some reduce interest rates if students pursue certain subjects.
