Category: Campus life

Peter Rickman is taking his enthusiasm for presidential candidate John Edwards and hunkering down in Iowa until the Jan. 3 caucuses. He left Saturday morning.

“I will be working through caucus night and the victory party,” said the optimistic Rickman, 25, who, besides having a full-time job at a software company, is a master’s degree student at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.

The UW-Madison rejected a complaint by Law School students who asked for discipline against Professor Leonard Kaplan for remarks allegedly insulting the Hmong, according to a document obtained by The Capital Times from an open records request.

Several Asian students were offended by statements they said Kaplan made about Hmong culture during a February lecture. After heated forums about the incident, which Kaplan did not attend, he released a statement saying his comments were misquoted and taken out of context, and that he was trying to illustrate the difficulty nations have in integrating immigrants.

After hearing that developers had secured a new location for the historic “Conklin House,” the Madison Plan Commission Monday night OK’d plans for a new $24 million, 14-story apartment building at the bustling corner of West Johnson and Mills streets on the UW-Madison campus.

Close to the UW chemistry building, the Ten Twenty-Two West Johnson apartment is aimed at students, professionals and researchers with families. It calls for 163 apartments from efficiency to four-bedroom units, with underground parking.

College binge drinking has been on the public health radar for years, but new research sheds light on the extent of the problem on campuses today â?? especially “pre-partying,” participating in heavy, rapid drinking before attending a real party where the drinking continues.

So, you might be wondering: Who was the commencement speaker at the University of Wisconsin-Madison? (Trust us, you were wondering this.) Well, it was, of all people, our old pal Scott Van Pelt … and we’re not ashamed to say it was a pretty amusing speech.

A UW-Madison student who reported being sexually assaulted in the Ogg Hall dorm has decided not to press charges after telling police she couldn ‘t remember exactly what happened.

Alcohol is believed to have played a significant part in the Nov. 30 incident, police said.

If the fire alarms go off at UW-Madison ‘s Witte Hall these days, no one is sure if it ‘s fire or really a matter of crying wolf.

That ‘s because the fire alarms there have blared on 15 occasions this semester.

“What does it sound like?”
“It’s the most ungodly sound in the entire world!”
“It’s annoying..it’s loud.”

What these UW Madison students are describing isn’t your typical alarm clock.

In fact it’s a malfunctioning fire alarm system that has been going off all semester in the Witte dorms downtown.. forcing students to evacuate their rooms.

MADISON, Wis. — UW Housing officials are conceding they’ve been dealing with a troublesome fire alarm problem at Witte Hall on campus.

Housing officials told WISC-TV that an inspection on Monday showed the system is finally back on track, but not before 18 false fire alarms were reported this semester.

The semester-long problem has some students wondering why it took so long to get action and answers.

Kristin Matuszak, who received a bachelor’s degree from UW-Madison Sunday, said she always felt like a fish out of water in Madison. It became so overwhelming that she left school after three years, vowing she’d never come back.
Whenever she thought about her time at UW, it was the zaniness she remembered most — the Mifflin Street block party, Halloween on State Street and the time she went to a football game and a student two rows in front of her opened up a cooler, pulled out a live fish and threw it up into the stands.

“But while I was away, I kind of felt that there was something missing,” Matuszak said while giving the commencement address on behalf of her fellow graduates Sunday afternoon at the Kohl Center.

In America’s Dairyland, 160,000 people are employed in the dairy industry. According to the UW’s department of agriculture, that’s almost half the agriculture jobs in the state. But the number of students studying to enter the field was dwindling – until the Dairy Science Department decided to do something about it.

Now, they’ve implemented a new strategy to attract students and it seems to be working. In the past three years, the number of students in the Dairy Science recruiting classes have more than tripled.

Ted Halbach, an extension Dairy Youth Specialist and Instructor in the Department of Dairy Science at the University of Wisconsin says, “In 2004 we had a recruiting class of 8 students”. With enrollment numbers so low, the dairy science program partnered with an unlikely source, a marketing firm.

Years of hard work and dedication paid off Sunday at the Kohl Center for a couple of thousand U-W Madison Students. Sunday was graduation day.

ESPN Sportscenter anchor Scott Van Pelt, who has called Madison, America’s Best College Sports Town, delivered the commencement address.

Van Pelt stressed patience and the idea that the process of achieving a dream is just as important and the dream itself. But, overall, he emphasized the value of time.

Roughly a year after a string of disturbing sexual assaults shocked the downtown area, police, the university and students continue to work toward creating a safer environment for the UW-Madison campus.

The UW-Madison Student Labor Action Coalition plans to gather for â??labor justice carolingâ? outside Chancellor John Wileyâ??s office Monday to protest against the universityâ??s Adidas contract and the alleged union busting by New Era Cap Company, a UW licensee.

The University of Wisconsinâ??s decision Tuesday to pay nearly $1,300 in security fees for a student event has sparked concern among representatives of some liberal-oriented groups on campus.

Rachel Butler, a junior at the UW-Madison, is worried that students are losing their right to decide how their money is used.

“Right now, the ability to use our student fees to support student life and our campus experience is being threatened,” says Butler, coordinator for the Student Rights Campaign, part of UW-Madison’s student government, Associated Students of Madison (ASM). “This presents a huge problem in students’ ability to provide the services we want for our university.”

Of all the institutions in America, the university should be the last place where you would find policies that discourage the free exchange of ideas.
UW-Madison administrators should bear that in mind as they review fees charged to provide security for speakers invited to campus to deliver controversial views.

In the latest flap over university students and free speech, there is a claim that it is conservative speech which is threatened at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Liberals may gloat a bit because two years ago it was they who were in the crosshairs over a speech in Whitewater by a controversial Colorado professor.

The fundamental principle at stake supersedes political ideology, however, and both sides should unite on this issue. Conservatives have a point â?? not the whole point extending to the left-wing conspiracy claimed by one Republican senator â?? but enough of a point that there should be some serious reconsideration of UW System policy.

A University of Wisconsin group wants administrators to open its doors to Iraqi students, to help them achieve their academic goals away from the war zone. Brian Bull reports.â?¦(Audio.)

As states and the federal government continue to debate financial support for military personnel who want to attend (or return to) college, some states have taken their own initiative. Now, recently released enrollment data for the University of Wisconsin System could offer a preview of what states can expect in the coming years â?? despite new research documenting the persistent educational gaps between veterans and non-veterans.

UW-Madisonâ??s Roman Catholic Foundation filed a motion against the university Monday claiming it determined money distribution based on the groupâ??s religious ties.

Specifically, the complaint asks UW-Madison to not use the groupâ??s religion in deciding funding, to treat RCF-UW like any other registered student organization and to reimburse $39,000 in costs university officials said they would cover in the groupâ??s budgets, but later retracted.

The University of Wisconsin decided Tuesday to cover nearly $1,300 in safety fees recently charged to a student group.

With the fall semester winding down, room cleaning probably isn ‘t high on the agenda of most UW-Madison students. But some residents of Chadbourne Residential College weren ‘t given an option over the weekend.

A broken radiator coil in a seventh-floor dorm room Saturday morning led to partial flooding all the way down to the west wing ‘s main level, forcing dozens of students to scoop up belongings and temporarily evacuate their rooms.

With local forecasts calling for continuing snowfall and freezing rain early this week, the university issued a statement regarding ongoing snow removal after facing scrutiny from some students.

Chancellor John Wiley announced Friday his plans to step down in September 2008 as head of UW-Madison after seven years of promoting the universityâ??s private funding and building relationships with students.

Chadbourne Residential College experienced flooding on several floors Saturday, with many residents of the buildingâ??s west wing forced to evacuate their rooms and remove their belongings to avoid water damage.

University of Wisconsin students are choosing to study abroad in record numbers despite the U.S. dollar weakening in comparison to foreign currencies.

With the announcement Friday that University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley will step down from his position at the end of the school year, his mark on the university is still to be determined.

After nearly seven years as head of the University of Wisconsin, John Wiley announced Friday he will step down as chancellor effective September 2008.

A gust of winter weather has not deterred one group of downtown motorists from braving the streets during and after the snow, sleet and general slushiness that covered Madison this week. These drivers, however, were not manning the city’s snowplows.

It was moped drivers on the UW-Madison campus and the surrounding areas who took to the roads sporting parkas and face masks during and after Saturday’s storm and Tuesday’s snow.

According to University of Wisconsin Police officer Kristin Radtke, Madison has the highest concentration of mopeds in the country.

UW-Madison officials said they will review whether a student Republican group should be charged nearly $1,300 to cover security for a campus speech by a conservative commentator.