Three street people who reportedly smoked crack and burglarized homes in Brittany Zimmermann’s neighborhood are no more likely to become homicide suspects than any of hundreds of others sought or questioned in the investigation, police said Tuesday.
WHITEWATER, Wis. — College students in Whitewater who went without heat and hot water in their dorms for about six days are getting the service back.
And they’re using the experience in a fundraiser to provide safe drinking water to those who need it in India.
The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater said temporary repairs to the steam system allowed hot water to be restored in some residence halls by 4 p.m. Tuesday, and others are getting it restored Tuesday night. Hot water and steam are expected to be restored to all campus buildings by noon Wednesday.
The graduation rate for all students in the UW System is higher than the national average. It’s also greater than that of African Americans, creating a gap educators are trying to narrow. Shamane Mills reportsâ?¦(Audio.)
Police are searching for a man accussed of sexually assaulting a female UW-Madison student Friday afternoon near the intersection of Park Street and University Avenue.
UW-Madison senior and member of the Student Labor Action Coalition John Bruning has gone to great lengths to convince Chancellor John Wiley to implement his groupâ??s demands.
A convicted sex offender in jail on suspicion of violating his probation is considered a â??material witnessâ? in the homicide investigation of University of Wisconsin junior Brittany Zimmermann, according to court records.
Some University of Wisconsin students are petitioning against a city ordinance, in efforts to â??save the musicâ? at the annual Mifflin Street Block Party.
The state Department of Corrections is seeking to have a Madison man who is considered a material witness in the killing of University of Wisconsin student Brittany Zimmermann returned to prison for a year.
The move to pull him off the streets appears unrelated to the murder investigation.
David Kahl, 42, has been held in jail since his arrest the night of April 2, the day that Zimmermann was found dead in her West Doty Street apartment.
Kahl is considered a material witness because, after his arrest, he provided police with the names of two men who went door to door in the Doty Street area trying to raise money by scamming people or stealing from apartments.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley stopped at the Wintergreen Resort Tuesday to offer the UW’s help to the area and answer questions.
The UW still follows the Wisconsin Idea, Wiley said. The Wisconsin Idea was started by UW President Charles Van Hise in 1904 and the principle is that the boundaries and influence of the university should extend to the boundaries of the state and beyond. One way it does that is to provide help to groups, organizations and businesses around the state.
A convicted sex offender jailed on suspicion of violating his probation is considered a material witness in the death of 21-year-old UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann, court records show.
Documents seeking to revoke David Kahl’s probation quote him as telling police he entered a home near Zimmermann’s apartment on the day she was killed and knew two homeless men he identified as “Hank” and “Mitchell” who were running scams and breaking into houses, WKOW-TV reported.
The fire that killed three University of Wisconsin-Stout students at an off-campus duplex started in a love seat in the living room of the home, investigators said Monday.
27 News has uncovered Madison police officials consider sex offender David Kahl a “material witness” in the death of UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann, and have asked Kahl to help them find two homeless men.
In court documents filed by a Wisconsin Department of Corrections probation agent, Zimmermann’s April 2 murder is cited in a request to revoke Kahl’s probation. “Mr. Kahl was a material witness in the death of a coed that was discovered on Doty St.,” wrote agent Allen Matheus.
After 9-11, Congress required Immigration and Customs Enforcement to better track international students. So in 2003, ICE implemented a database for the students called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).
Laurie Cox, UW Madison’s International Student Services Director, says SEVIS allows universities can collect the information about students. Additionally, students can get a print out of their information to bring to their respective consulate for the student visa process. Fees are going up in October to pay for a more efficient, paperless SEVIS that even students can update with things like address changes. (Audio.)
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to roughly double the fees, to as much as $200, that visiting international students must pay in order to upgrade a federal surveillance program that monitors those students’ activities.
The increased fees for international visitors applying for student, exchange-visitor, or similar nonimmigrant visas (in categories known as F, J, or M visas) were outlined in Monday’s Federal Register and are scheduled to take effect on October 1. The revenue will support a growing database on international visitors called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or Sevis.
UW-Madison students participated in a 100-hour competition over the weekend designed to spur studentsâ?? entrepreneur skills.
Hoping to claim one of the $300 grand prizes, aspiring entrepreneurs purchased items Friday at Memorial Union to create an invention for the Wiscontrepreneur 100-hour challenge.
What looked like a really bad garage sale had the minds of young entrepreneurs like Ace Kvit twirling.
Armed with $10 vouchers good for an assemblage of mostly well-used, forgotten and outdated items, Kvit, 19, a Russian native studying biochemistry, and other UW-Madison students scoured a meeting room Friday on the second floor of the Memorial Union for ideas and parts for the 100-hour Wiscontrepreneuer Challenge.
Depending on whom you ask, Madison ‘s single, transient men — often mentally ill, addicted to drugs and alcohol, or both — are a problem this liberal city has long been reluctant to confront.
Or they ‘re a convenient scapegoat for a pair of unsolved killings and the targets of a general disdain for the poor.
It ‘s hard to know when police admit they have a less-than-ideal handle on their numbers or the problems they cause, although some officers say the problems they cause on State Street and elsewhere in the central city have gotten much worse.
The thousands of new student apartments sprouting up near UW-Madison have the potential to create a problem Downtown hasn’t seen before on a large scale.
As students swarm to the newer dwellings, there’s the danger of a “death spiral” in neighborhoods left behind, some officials say.
Incomes of graduates of Wisconsin technical colleges grew substantially over the past five years, according to a survey of those who graduated in the 2001-02 school year.
Annual median salaries of those responding to the survey grew by 48 percent over a five-year period, to nearly $40,000. The Consumer Price Index rose by 16 percent in the same period.
The study by the Wisconsin Technical College System also found that three-fourths of the graduates who responded were working in their fields of training.
The causes of poor college graduation rates among low-income, first-generation and minority students have pervaded the pages of academic publication for years, while the instances in which African-American students have outperformed their White counterparts in the same area have gone largely undocumented.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison boosted its Black student graduation rate by 20 percent from 2002 to 2006, but Whites still graduate at a higher rate than Blacks, leaving the school with a 22 percentage point gap.
â??The most startling observation about this reports is that these top-rate universities produce stagnate or declining minority graduation rates year-after-year, and they do nothing about it,â? Carey says.
According to a new report released by Education Sector, an independent education policy think tank, there are currently 62 colleges and universities where the six-year graduation rates for Black undergraduate students outpace that of their White peers.
The Recording Industry Association of America this month fired off 569 “pre-litigation settlement letters” to college students whom it suspected of pirating music. The letters appear to be the largest batch sent since the RIAA began an expanded campaign in February 2007.
Most previous waves of letters went to about 400 students each, according to press releases on the RIAA’s Web site. Students who receive such letters are identified after RIAA investigators download music available on the students’ computers, said Jonathan Lamy, and RIAA spokesman.
Whether merely making a song “available,” without proof that another party has illegally copied and downloaded it, constitutes copyright infringement has been questioned in several recent court decisions.
MADISON, Wis. — Plans are in the works for the annual Mifflin Street Block Party on May 3.
In light of recent crime in that neighborhood, some residents and police have been preparing for the event together, WISC-TV reported.
“I hope this year will be just as great,” said Mark Bednar, a Mifflin Street resident.
Bednar said that he’s looking forward to the annual party, but said he also has safety on his mind because of the recent crime.
“My roommate’s laptop and then a few houses down she had a purse taken, but it was a very wham-bam situation in which we were all just kind of blindsided by it,” he said.
UW-Madison officials are considering a big renovation of their campus swimming facility, the UW Natatorium. But it may come too late to head-off a fat bonus for the university’s swim team coach. It may also be a tough sell to students, despite the facility’s decay.
The facility was built in the sixties and proponents of a renovation say it needs many repairs and revisions, including the installation of a diving tower and a larger pool to meet competitive swim meet standards. Proponents say the proposed renovation would cost approximately $60 million. UW-Madison swim team coach Eric Hansen said team members currently practice at another campus facility because of the natatorium’s inadequacies.
The Wisconsin Alumni Student Boardâ??s 8th annual All-Campus Party will kick off Saturday, April 19 with events running through April 26.
Partygoers at the Mifflin Street Block Party May 3 will be hearing an unexpected message from the Madison Police Department: Always lock your doors and windows.
The Madison Police Department laid out a plan Thursday night to bring safety measures at the upcoming Mifflin Street Block Party â??back to basics.â?
SUN PRAIRIE — UW-Platteville student Bryan Heins’ testicular cancer treatments have been going well. And now that his cancer is in the monitoring phase, his family hopes to cover final medical costs and spread awareness at a Saturday benefit in Sun Prairie.
Sports memorabilia autographed by Packers legend Brett Favre will be among the items donated at a silent auction.
When Heins, 21, was diagnosed in October 2007 and forced to stop classes at Platteville, his parents knew medical costs would skyrocket. His mom, Crystal Gardner, was worried.
In Madison we don’t look for the first robin of spring. We look for chairs on the Terrace.
The candy-colored sunburst furniture returned this week from winter hibernation. Saturday is the season’s first outdoor performance at the UW-Madison Memorial Union. The brat stand is being readied, and the Hoofers sailing club is preparing to put in the docks.
DE PERE â?? For PaHoua Moua, it means studying education at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. For Brigitta Hammond, it’s pursuing a degree from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
The Wisconsin Covenant means something a little different to each of the 120 or so eighth-graders who gathered Thursday at St. Norbert College.
But the message for each is the same, Gov. Jim Doyle told the assembled students. “You can get to college,” he said, “and here is a clear path to do it.”
WHITEWATER, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater said that there won’t be any hot water or heat on campus until Sunday at the earliest.
A boiler exploded in the university’s power plant on the north side of campus Wednesday afternoon, knocking out the heating system.
On Thursday, windows were boarded up at the building, and nearby Esker Dining Hall remained closed.
The Division of Recreational Sports is facing skeptics after putting forth a proposition to have student fees fund a new $60 million Natatorium facility.
The family of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann is establishing a scholarship fund in the hope that another student will be able to realize dreams that would otherwise be out of reach.
“They want for another student to have the opportunity that Brittany worked so hard to accomplish on her own,” said Julie Foley, who manages the Dane County district attorney’s trauma victims services. “The legacy of Brittany’s life will be that someone else will be able to achieve the dreams she couldn’t.”
MADISON, Wis. — After the shootings at Virginia Tech one year ago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison put plans in place to notify the campus community of an emergency.
The university also developed efforts to help prevent similar tragedies on campus. One of those efforts is a training session called “Avenger Violence Awareness” that UW-Madison police put on Wednesday.
During the training, police reviewed the events that happened at Virginia Tech and explained how communication can be key to preventing campus violence.
MADISON, Wis. — The family of the University of Wisconsin-Madison student killed on April 2 announced it is establishing a scholarship in Brittany Zimmermann’s name and conducting a fund drive called “Dollars for Brittany.”
Police said the 21-year-old UW-Madison junior was killed after her assailant broke into her first-floor apartment on West Doty Street.
UW Madison students freeze for fired Adidas workers. Freezing in place for five minutes on the Library Mall, members of the UW Student Labor Action Coalition want the administration to step up to the plate, on behalf of fired Adidas workers in El Salvador.
A new bill in Congress aims to require that U.S. colleges and universities inform campus residents of an emergency within 30 minutes. Backers argue it could save lives, but critics say it could cause more problems.
The â??Virginia Tech Victims Campus Emergency Response Policy and Notification Actâ? mandates that schools notify students within half an hour of a confirmed emergency. Its introduction comes about a year after the Virginia Tech massacre, where officials didnâ??t alert the entire campus of a shooting in a residence hall for nearly two hours. By that time, the gunman had started a second shooting spree, killing a total of 32 people before taking his own life.
UW-Madison students still question university security a year after the Virginia Tech massacre.
With so many campus crises this year, headlines like this one are ever-present, however, safety officials at UW-Madison and other campuses say blanket terms like â??lockdownâ? are misleading and infeasible to implement.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced Tuesday a plan to increase the protection of residentsâ?? personal information stored by government agencies.
The family of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann has established a scholarship in her name and is conducting a fund drive to raise money for the scholarship.
“Dollars for Brittany” is the fund drive, coordinated through the Marshfield Medical Center Credit Union.
Julie Foley, manager of the crime response program in the Dane County District Attorney’s Office, is spearheading efforts here for the fund drive in Zimmermann’s name.
“This scholarship will give the opportunity to a student who has as much drive as Brittany and who has the financial need,” Foley said today.
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz described his career path to University of Wisconsin students over dinner Tuesday night.
It took a while, but the property manager finally got a clue that it’s a crummy thing to hold someone to a lease for an apartment where his fiancée was murdered.
This week, Wisconsin Management Co. located its heart and announced it will release Jordan Gonnering from the lease for the Madison apartment he shared with fellow University of Wisconsin student Brittany Zimmermann. The lease was to have run until August 2009.
The heated debate surrounding the deportation orders of Tope and Oluwagbenga Awe highlights the urgent need for immigration reform. The Awes came to the United States from Nigeria on a tourist visa in 1989 and in July of 2004 after their application for citizenship was finally denied, the Awe family was ordered to leave the country.
Samuel Awe, Tope and Oluwagbenga’s father, was undergoing kidney treatment at the time and the family failed to contact the immigration service in July. The lack of contact classifies the family as “immigration fugitives.”
WASHINGTON — While most of the Democratic Party’s superdelegates are members of Congress, governors or senior party officials, UW-Madison student Awais Khaleel, Lauren Wolfe and Jason Rae are still in college. Yet the votes of the three student superdelegates might help decide the Democratic nominee.
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Medical investigators have determined how a University of Wisconsin-Madison student died in southern New Mexico.
The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator said that Michael Mowers, 22, set himself on fire.
A woman walking her dog found his body last Nov. 21 in a Las Cruces culvert.
A controversial website that has made headlines across the Country is now up and running at UW Whitewater. JuicyCampus.com is a trash talking site where people can post anything – with impunity and anonymity.
Some of the postings are so “juicy” we couldn’t even share them with our television viewers. Students we talked to say they don’t want their campus associated with the website.
“Always anonymous, always juicy” is the slogan of the website, started by a Duke University Alumni.. Just go to the site, type in UW Whitewater in the “choose your campus” tab and you’re in.
The Athletic Department announced Wednesday a new program to help freshmen athletes adjust to life at UW-Madison.
The Life Skills Academy is UW-Madisonâ??s extension of the NCAAâ??s Challenging Athletesâ?? Minds for Professional Success program, which has been in practice since 1994. In contrast to the Life Skills Academy, the CHAMPS program is aimed at all student athletes.
Officials from the Madison Police Department attended a Bassett Neighborhood meeting Monday to discuss safety concerns in the area following the April 2 homicide of West Doty Street resident Brittany Zimmermann.
The fiancé of Brittany Zimmermann will be allowed out of the lease at the apartment where Zimmermann was found killed April 2, the propertyâ??s landlord announced Monday.
Redeveloped plans for the new University of Wisconsin Union South project were revealed Monday night at the Design Committee meeting in Memorial Union.
As the homicide investigation of Brittany Zimmermann continues, Madison police called the case a â??game of DNAâ? at a Bassett Neighborhood Committee meeting Monday.
The University of Wisconsin student who found his fiancée slain in their West Doty Street apartment was released from his lease, a management company announced Monday.
Alexandra Clinton
Correspondent for The Capital Times â?? 4/15/2008 12:39 pm
The mystery surrounding the death of the University of Wisconsin-Madison student found fatally burned in southern New Mexico in November was solved recently in an autopsy report ruling the death a suicide.
The student, Michael J. Mowers, 22, was found burned Nov. 21 in a culvert near a canal in Las Cruces, N.M. The Office of the Medical Examiner in Albuquerque said Mowers committed suicide by setting himself on fire, according to stories in Monday’s and today’s edition of the Las Cruces Sun News.
Detectives investigating the Brittany Zimmermann homicide want to speak to anyone who was solicited for money or gave money to strangers in the Bassett neighborhood on April 1 or April 2, Madison police said Monday.
Zimmermann, 21, a junior at UW-Madison, was killed April 2 after her first-floor apartment at 517 W. Doty St. was broken into. Police still have no suspects or motive in the killing.
When Tope Awes parents told her she needed to go to the Milwaukee office of Immigration Customs and Enforcement last month, she and her family expected a review of her status, and thought she might get a chance to petition for a student visa.
The 22-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison pharmacy student had been brought to the United States from Nigeria at the age of 3. She had grown up and gone to school in Milwaukee and was now one year from college graduation.
One year ago, Richard F. Celeste, president of Colorado College, did not keep a red card in his wallet that explained how to send messages to the entire campus during emergencies.
Charles D. Green, leader of the University of Iowa’s police department, did not arm his officers with .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistols â?? or any guns at all.
And William N. Flagler Jr. did not hand out business cards identifying him as the director of Northern Virginia Community College’s Office of Emergency Planning, because the job did not exist.
LAS CRUCES â?? The state’s medical investigator has ruled that a University of Wisconsin-Madison student found dead in Las Cruces last year committed suicide by setting himself on fire.
The body of Michael J. Mowers, 22, was discovered by a woman walking her dog on Nov. 21 in a culvert leading to a canal near Calle de Alegra, off South Main Street. His body had been burned.
He was last seen alive in Wisconsin on Nov. 12. Las Cruces police have said foul play is not suspected in Mowers’ death.
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Jim Doyle called on Madison-area eighth-graders on Monday to sign the Wisconsin Covenant and ensure a spot for themselves in a state college or university.
Doyle spoke about the Covenant project, a program that he nurtured into existence in 2007, at its ceremonial kickoff held at the Red Gym on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Last year, 17,000 students joined the program, representing all 72 Wisconsin counties, WISC-TV reported.
MADISON, Wis. — The murder of UW student Brittany Zimmerman is still unsettling to many people living in downtown Madison.
The case prompted more concerns about safety at the monthly Bassett Street neighborhood meeting on Monday night.
Police assured neighbors that they have increased patrols in the area since Zimmerman’s murder.
Lt. Joe Balles told neighbors that the extra police presence is not only helping calm residents’ fears but is also helping some people come forward with more information
