Construction officially began Friday on the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the public-private partnership that will house much of UW-Madisonâ??s future interdisciplinary research.
Gov. Jim Doyle, members of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and UW-Madison Alumni John and Tashia Morgridge welcomed community members during a groundbreaking ceremony Friday at the building site on the 1300 block of University Avenue.
City officials are pushing for a revamp of the Mifflin Street Block Party, including possible sponsorship of the event, after hitting a record number of arrests at the 40th annual event Saturday.
More than 4,500 University of Wisconsin faculty, staff and students have registered for the WiscAlert-Text Messaging program since the sign-up process began last Thursday.
Corporate and public sector representatives broke ground Friday for the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on University Avenue.
Friends of slain University of Wisconsin junior Brittany Zimmermann raised more than $2,000 to support a scholarship in her memory at the Mifflin Street Block Party Saturday.
For the fifth year in a row, the Mifflin Street Block Party hit a record high in the number of arrests Saturday. According to preliminary numbers from the Madison Police Department, arrests climbed roughly 10 percent from last year despite a similar number of attendees.
It looked like Bourbon Street in New Orleans on a Sunday morning, as the Mifflin Street Block Party in Madison wound down at about 8 p.m. Saturday.
After about 10,000 young people had partied hard for hours, the street was strewn with flattened beer cartons, flattened beer cans, broken plastic cups and — manure from the steeds of mounted police. Most party-goers had left, and a phalanx of police arrived to clear the rest from the street, leaving only some die-hard partiers on balconies and porches.
About 400 people had been arrested, mostly for alcohol-related offenses such as underage drinking and having open alcohol containers.
A team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison won this year’s University Real Estate Challenge, a competition that challenges college students to analyze and develop projects.
The contest is sponsored by the Minnesota chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP). The competition allows students to get real-world experience by preparing feasibility studies on potential projects. At the same time, NAIOP members, who evaluate the students’ work, can get a look at prospective employees.
Madison has tamed its raucous State Street Halloween celebration, but this weekend’s 40th annual Mifflin Street Block Party remains a booze-infused wild child.
On Saturday, thousands of college students are expected to converge on the Downtown neighborhood to drink heavily and get arrested in droves.
What started in the 1960s as a peacenik music fest, has turned into a chain of hard-drinking house parties and street revelry.
Like many game show enthusiasts, one of Suchita Shah’s life goals was to be on America ‘s favorite game show, “Jeopardy!”
Shah, a UW-Madison senior majoring in neurobiology, said she remembers watching the show while sitting around the dinner table as a child and shouting back the answers to the TV.
The 911 dispatcher who mishandled the call from a homicide victim’s phone has transferred to another Dane County job, officials confirmed Friday.
Contrary to what he said Thursday, the director of the 911 center, Joe Norwick, now acknowledges that the transfer took place soon after April 2, the day a UW-Madison student was found dead in her home.
Karen Bosold is a Madison mother with two daughters attending UW-Madison. She made sure that the girls took their cell phones with them to campus, and she reminded them to use the phones to call 911 if they get in trouble.
“That’s the reason you get your daughter a cell phone,” Bosold said. “They all tell you it’s to talk to their friends. As a parent paying the bills, safety is the reason.”
The revelry, boozing and general lawlessness went on as usual at the annual Mifflin Street Block Party, but reminders of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann permeated the party.
Zimmermann was killed a month ago in her home near Mifflin Street, where the raucous pre-finals block party takes over the neighborhood during the first Saturday in May.
Four decades is a long time to be looking for someone who does not want to be found. It means that only one of you can be successful, either at hiding or finding. In the murder of Christine Rothschild, there is the added skill of remembering.
And to her friends and the few who remember her â?? the retired detectives, the aging professor, the surviving sister â?? Rothschild’s murder might have been yesterday.
In the prim 1950s, college dorms were off-limits to members of the opposite sex. Then came the 1970s, when male and female students started crossing paths in coed dormitories. Now, to the astonishment of some Baby Boomer parents, a growing number of colleges are going even further: coed rooms.
The weak dollar, a sluggish economy and a tougher time getting some types of student loans is making it harder for some U.S. college students to study or travel abroad this summer.
Study abroad programs have set records in recent years, with more than 223,000 U.S. students participating during the 2005-06 academic year, according to the latest annual survey by the New York-based Institute of International Education. Most universities expect overall participation to keep rising, but that growth could be limited within some programs by the struggling dollar and other economic factors.
MADISON â?? One of the nation’s most enduring and well-known college beer bashes will go on but against a darker backdrop this year.
Thousands of college students will gather Saturday for the annual Mifflin Street Block Party, where students party hop between houses stocked with kegs, and beer bongs start flowing about 8 a.m.
Itâ??s always fulfilling when you find such a colorful, culturally rich event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Thatâ??s exactly what the African Student Association (ASA) brought to the Lowell Center Saturday, April 26, with with their annual show â??Africa Night.â?
SAFEwalk is a program that sends out teams of two to walk with students on campus who request it. Everyday, they provide their services from 8 at night to 1 in the morning. But, some feel it could be better.
“My last day was on April 29,” stated Dana DeMet.
Earlier this week DeMet and 10 of his fellow SAFEwalk employees quit, saying that management was not listening to their concerns.
The streets of downtown Madison near Doty street haven’t been the same since the murder of Brittany Zimmermann just one month ago. What’s missing is the sense of security residents once had in their neighborhood.
Abby Riese lives on West Doty, several houses down from where Zimmermann was found dead in her home and is still nervous about the fact her killer is still on the loose. Since the murder she and her friends only travel alone if they have to during the day.
“And now after this I don’t feel safe here anymore,” says Riese. “I promised my dad that I wouldn’t walk alone at night and I haven’t so there’s a lot of times where I just don’t do things I would normally do.”
More than 300 dollars from a local firefighters’ union went to the Dollars for Brittany scholarship fund as friends of Zimmermann kicked off fundraising during Saturday’s Mifflin Street Block Party. One month later, the 21-year-old’s tragic murder is still fresh on everyone’s minds.
“I just thought it was a good idea to bring awareness to it and just also help people remember to be safe,” says Brittany’s best friend, Jenna Krasselt.
The fundraiser was held right in the midst of the block party, now in it’s 40th year, as UW students crowded the streets enjoying the annual celebration.
MADISON, Wis. — Thousands of college students gathered downtown Saturday for the 40th annual Mifflin Street block party, one of nation’s most enduring and well-known college beer bashes.
At the block party, thousands of revelers party hop between houses stocked with kegs all day.
MADISON, Wis. — Many questions linger following the revelation Thursday that a 911 call from the cell phone of slain University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann did not result in police being sent to her downtown apartment last month.
County Executive Kathleen Falk said that “the system didn’t work like it should” when a 911 dispatcher received the call from Zimmermann’s cell phone on April 2.
The thousands of “Jeopardy!” fans who filled the Kohl Center in April to watch the taping of the 2008 collegiate championships will finally get to see the two weeks of episodes beginning Monday afternoon.
Fifteen collegians, including UW-Madison senior Suchita Shah, competed in the collegiate tournament, which was taped before about 5,000 fans at each of three taping sessions in the “Jeopardy!” studio set up at one end of the sports arena.
The Student Labor Action Coalition is once again pressuring UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley to end the university’s exclusive contract with adidas for athletic apparel.
The long-running dispute stems from treatment of former workers at the Hermosa factory in El Salvador, which closed in 2005 while owing 260 workers about $825,000 in back pay and severance funds. Sixty-three workers who were union members protested and were blacklisted and labeled as troublemakers, the students say.
There are also allegations that the owner of the Hermosa factory, which had made clothing for adidas, embezzled some employee funds.
“With four months left in his tenure as chancellor, Wiley has one last chance to redeem himself by taking decisive action in support of workers by cutting the UW’s exclusive contract with adidas. If he doesn’t act, students will forever remember him as the Sweatshop Chancellor who sold out UW-Madison to corporate interests,” said coalition member Phoebe Taurick.
Ald. Mike Verveer wants to find an organizing group for the Mifflin Street Block Party that would turn it into a celebration instead of a beer party.
And he says he has encountered some interest from representatives of the mayor’s office and the Madison Police Department.
“I had that conversation in the last several days, and during and after the party, with Joel Plant from the mayor’s office and Capt. Mary Schauf, commander of the central police district,” Verveer said Sunday, the day after the party resulted in more than 400 arrests.
“It is apparent that this year, unlike past years, city officials besides myself are interested in providing some semblance of organization or sponsorship for this inevitable annual event.”
As Madison recovers from its latest shock, the murder of University of Wisconsin-Madison junior Brittany Zimmermann, students, locals and out-of-towners were tentatively festive at this yearâ??s Mifflin Street Block Party on Saturday.
Joviality and cooperation, among drunkenness, colored the fortieth annual gathering that originally intended to protest the Vietnam War. Fewer than 10,000 attended this year’s party, according to Madison Police Department Public Information Officer Joel DeSpain — down from 2007.
MADISON, Wis. — Itâ??s the annual bash that brings thousands to Mifflin Street.
“Just partying, seeing all your friends at one time, people you don’t see during the year, just a great time,” according to UW senior Rachel Roggi.
In addition to the usual festive atmosphere of the Mifflin Street Block Party, revelers noticed a new rallying cry this year: â??Pizza, remember Brittany Zimmermann,” came the repeated shout from volunteer Joann Gonnering.
Pretty depressing April so far. Winter won’t leave.
And neither will the predators who haunt downtown Madison. Three unsolved murders. A scorched skeleton where a cathedral once stood. And a State Street that is becoming the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Regardless of the outcome of the open murder investigations, here is a simple question to ask yourself.
Is Madison a safer place than it was ten years ago?
Registration for the campus-wide safety alert text messaging system WiscAlert-Text began Thursday and will be available to all students through the My UW server.
At its best, Madisonâ??s annual Mifflin Street Block Party has been a peaceful day of revelry, music, celebration and relaxation the weekend before UW-Madison final exams. A chance for students and other residents to blow off steam, socialize and soak up a nearly 40-year-old traditionâ??along with a few beers.
Brittany Zimmermann, the UW-Madison junior killed in her apartment last month, called 911 before she died, officials confirmed Thursday.
A fire in an elevator in the A tower of the University of Wisconsinâ??s Witte Hall forced residents to evacuate the building early Thursday morning.
Two University of Wisconsin students took fate in their hands and spun the wheel this week.
Madison police said Thursday a 911 call was placed from 21-year-old Brittany Zimmermannâ??s cell phone the day of her homicide.
By RYAN J. FOLEY
Associated Press Writer
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — One of the nation’s most enduring and well-known college beer bashes will go on but against a darker backdrop this year.
Thousands of college students will gather Saturday for the annual Mifflin Street Block Party, where students party hop between houses stocked with kegs and beer bongs start flowing about 8 a.m.
But the spring celebration comes just one month after the slaying of University of Wisconsin-Madison junior Brittany Zimmermann in her apartment a few blocks away. The murder, and two others nearby that also remain unsolved, has police and university officials warning students to keep strangers out of their homes.
UW-Madison students, staff and faculty will be able to get emergency warnings as text messages on their cell phones beginning this fall.
The WiscAlerts-Text system will allow enrolled users of the service to get critical safety information from the UW-Madison Police Department through text messaging on the user’s cell phone.
“The safety and security of the campus community is our top priority,” said Lt. Michael Newton of the UW-Madison Police Department. “WiscAlerts-Text will be a quick way to reach people who might be in class, on the bus or away from a computer. This is one more way we will be able to communicate in an emergency.”
In what is becoming a high-stakes back-and-forth between Madison police and the Dane County 911 Center, Madison’s police chief said this afternoon (Thursday) that a 911 dispatcher should have sent police to respond to a call from the cell phone of a student later found slain in her campus-area apartment.
“It would be accurate to state that there is evidence contained in the call, which should have resulted in a Madison police office being dispatched,” Police Chief Noble Wray said. “That would have been consistent with both Madison Police Department policy, and national 911 standards.”
Dane County’s 911 Center director admitted late Thursday that his agency made a mistake in fumbling a call from Brittany Zimmermann’s cell phone at about the time she was killed on April 2.
But after a month of internal investigation, the dispatcher who hung up on the call, after hearing nothing, remains on the job without disciplinary action, and the agency has made no changes in policy, training or procedure, director Joseph Norwick acknowledged.
Madison has tamed its raucous State Street Halloween celebration, but this weekend’s 40th annual Mifflin Street Block Party remains a booze-infused wild child.
On Saturday, thousands of college students are expected to converge on the Downtown neighborhood to drink heavily and get arrested in droves.
Apologize from the heart.
Find out what went wrong and fix it.
Those are the instructions the Madison community should give to Dane County ‘s 911 Center and the Madison Police Department in the aftermath of Thursday ‘s revelations about the day UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann was murdered.
Congress gave final approval Thursday to legislation aimed at ensuring the problems in the credit markets don’t prevent students from getting college loans.
The House passed the legislation in a 388-21 vote, one day after the Senate approved it. President Bush is expected to sign the measure.
Police said Thursday that a 911 call from a college student’s cell phone the day she was murdered should have triggered the dispatch of a police officer, but police weren’t notified of the call.
The existence of the April 2 call from Brittany Sue Zimmermann’s phone prompted questions about how local officials handle emergency calls from cell phones, as well as about the call itself.
This year one of Minnesota’s most important cultural institutions, the Schubert Club, is celebrating its 125th anniversary. A vital component of the organization’s activities, the Schubert Club Scholarship Competition, is also observing a major birthday.
Five of the winners came by the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Studio. The fourth young musician is soprano Caitlin Cisler. She’s a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She won first place in the advanced voice category. She sang the music of Richard Strauss and Handel, and talked with classical music host Steve Staruch. (Audio.)
At a press conference this afternoon, Madison Police Chief Noble Wray responded to the growing media feeding frenzy over the Brittany Zimmermann case by tossing a body to the assembled hungry reporters. His name was Joe Norwick.
Wray provided information markedly at odds with statements made earlier in the day by Norwick, director of Dane Countyâ??s 911 Center, regarding Isthmusâ?? report that the UW-Madison student called 911 prior to her murder on April 2.
Norwick had told reporters that the Madison police have specifically asked that officers not be dispatched to certain calls made from cell phones, in part because of technological limitations.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison launched its WiscAlerts text messaging system on Thursday but said it needs students and staff to volunteer for the service.
University officials said that those who want to receive the free alert need to access My UW Portal to register a cell phone that is able to receive texts. Then, in the event of an on-campus emergency, they will be notified immediately.
“We’re kind of an on-the-go society — people are out and about. This is one of the several means that we’re going to use to communicate with people in an emergency,” said Lt. Michael Newton, of the UW-Madison Police Department.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin-Madison Safewalkers are walking off the job, citing bad management as their main concern.
“For the past nine months, they haven’t listened to our concerns,” says Dana DeMet, a UW-Madison senior and former Safewalk employee.
DeMet said management has cut positions even though requests for Safewalks have increased, especially in light of the recent slaying of UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann.
“On an average night, we used to see seven or eight calls. But in the past month, we’re seeing double that,” DeMet said.
MADISON, Wis. — A 911 dispatcher received a call from the cell phone of a University of Wisconsin-Madison student sometime before she was killed last month but the call was apparently ignored, according to officials.
An official with the Dane County Public Safety communications said Thursday that a call for service was made from Brittany Zimmermann’s apartment to 911 on the day that she was killed in early April, but mistakes in how the call was handled resulted in no police officers being sent to investigate.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is now enrolling users in its emergency text messaging system, WiscAlerts-Text.
Students, faculty and staff can sign up by logging into the My UW Portal and looking for the WiscAlerts logo. Registration is simple and takes just a few moments.
We sat down with Jenna Krasselt, Brittany Zimmermann’s best friend, and her fiance’s sister, Thursday afternoon.
Krasselt says she doesn’t know the specifics about the 911 call Brittany made the day she was murdered. All she knows is that a call was made. Krasselt says it saddens her that her friend tried to call for help, and it wasn’t answered but didn’t know any other details about the call. She said Zimmermann did not have a land line phone in her Doty Street apartment.
In a news conference with media Thursday morning, Dane County Public Safety Communications Director Joe Norwick confirmed that a 911 telephone call was made from Brittany Zimmermann’s cell phone to the center the day of her homicide.
Norwick said that a 911 dispatcher couldn’t hear a voice on the other end of the line, and proceeded to answer other waiting 911 calls without calling the Zimmermann number back.
When you call 911 in an emergency, you trust help will come regardless if you call from a cell phone or land line.
Local police say you’re putting too much trust into the system.
Middleton’s 911 Dispatch Center has enhanced 911 which gives them the ability to track where calls come from.
A WiscMail service outage occurred across campus Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving many students and staff frustrated without their regular form of communication.
FedEx Corp. pledged a donation of $1 million over a four-year period Wednesday to support Teach For Americaâ??s growth, recruiting efforts and diversity goals.
Their growth plan aspires to place 7,500 corps members in 33 regions across the country by 2010. Thirty-three percent of those teachers would have diverse backgrounds.
Madison Police are investigating the shooting of a 19-year-old male Wednesday evening on the 600 block of West Washington Avenue.
The University of Wisconsin e-mail system suffered a crash that left the whole system down for a large part of the day Wednesday.
With his Green Bay Packers T-shirt and Packers blanket hanging as a wall decoration in his campus home, itâ??s easy to see that Kenny DeBauche bleeds green-and-gold.
The University of Wisconsinâ??s SAFEwalk program is facing hard times as a large number of its most experienced employees are quitting over dissatisfaction with the way the program is being run under its current supervisor.
The Dane County 911 dispatch center director said a UW-Madison student slain in her campus area apartment April 2 made a 911 phone call on her cell phone, but dispatchers failed to call her back.
Director Joe Norwick said today that when Brittany Zimmermann made the call, the dispatcher, who was unnamed, had no way of knowing the call wasn’t one of many non-emergency or misdialed phone calls that the center receives every day.
Norwick declined to say how long Zimmermann’s phone call lasted, or whether there was any communication from Zimmermann. He said the dispatcher, after a time, discontinued the call to answer another 911 call, which turned out to be a non-emergency call.
Madison police believe Brittany Zimmermann called 911 before she was stabbed and beaten to death inside her Doty Street apartment, but the 911 Center failed to send help after erroneously concluding the call was a mistake.
