The stalled state budget is stalling financial aid for students starting class this week at UW-Madison. Legislators are more than two months late in passing a budget. Without one, the state’s financial aid program cannot cut checks to its neediest students.
Tanika Wilson-Kromah is returning to school after ten years. She is also a mom, so searching for financial aid is helping her hit the books again.
The future of higher education in Wisconsin is at stake as budget negotiations continue between the state Assembly and Senate.
One item of particular concern is a proposed cap to limit the growth in tuition paid by University of Wisconsin System students to 4% a year for four years.
If approved, the tuition cap might preclude needed differential tuitions for high-demand majors, proposals that have been endorsed by students and approved by the Board of Regents.
The university that produces the most blue chip CEOs and university professors, the most Peace Corps volunteers, and the most productive and long-running patents isn’t Stanford or MIT — it’s the University of Wisconsin.
MADISON, Wis. — Given the University of Wisconsin football Badgers’ impressive home record, which only improved after Saturday’s victory over Washington State, fans of visiting teams who travel to Madison to see their team play Wisconsin are usually not happy with the outcome at Camp Randall.Even so, university officials are working to make Badger game day more enjoyable for all fans, regardless of their allegiances, WISC-TV reported.
Madison- 40,000 students are returning to UW-Madison this week, just 2 months after the disappearance and murder of UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan in the downtown Madison area.
Her killer was never caught. The crime is fresh in the minds of students. Some say they will be more cautious while out partying, knowing that Nolan’s killer is still on the loose.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Marching Band has been staying in line — both literally and figuratively — since it was threatened by officials for rowdy behavior and hazing last year.
News about the band has been positive since a series of embarrassing incidents came out about lewd behavior by the group led to Chancellor John Wiley’s decree to shape up.
Casey Nagy, an assistant to Wiley, said administrators have been “very pleased with their response” after band members were strongly warned about losing performance and travel privileges.
Madison police bust underage and over-served students on one of the busiest party weekends.
27 News rode along with Madison Police Department’s Party Patrol Friday night.
Six officers went from house to house and bar to bar busting underage drinkers.
The University of Wisconsinâ??s state-of-the-art, $28-million Ogg Hall opened in late August in the midst of a battle at the Capitol to secure funding for more housing projects at UW.
With just weeks to go until the start of the academic year, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted in August to raise tuition at all of its four-year schools.
MADISON, Wis. — Heather Zucker ate mostly salad and spaghetti during the years she lived in the University of Wisconsin dorms. Sometimes, her dinner was just a bowl of ice cream.
Zucker wasn’t being picky. She keeps kosher, and she said there were ”slim pickin’s” for Jewish students in the dining halls.
MADISON – As students returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the fall semester, detectives continued their search for the killer of a woman who vanished after a night of bar-hopping, common among the school’s 41,000 students.
Police and university officials are cautioning students to drink in moderation, stay with their friends and have a plan for getting home — things that 22-year-old Kelly Nolan apparently didn’t do before she disappeared early June 23.
Think back to your freshman year of college: what comes to mind?
Maybe meeting new people, taking tough classes or ordering pizza every night?That first year of freedom brings big changes for many new students. The most daunting may be managing their money for the first time.UW-Eau Claire allows credit card companies to market to students but only if a student organization or academic department sponsors the company’s visit to campus.
Policies vary by school in the UW-System, but at UW-Stout and UW-Madison, school leaders restrict where credit card companies or other marketing organizations can try to sell to students
MADISON, Wis. â?? As students returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison this week for the fall semester, detectives continued their search for the killer of a woman who vanished after a night of bar-hopping common among the school’s 41,000 students.
As students returned to UW-Madison this week for the fall semester, detectives continued their search for the killer of a woman who vanished after a night of bar-hopping common among the school ‘s 41,000 students.
Starting Sept. 1, The Big Ten Network will be added to the UW-Madison Residential Network system along with several other campus buildings, following an agreement between the university and the network.
The Big Ten Network will be available as a normal cable channel wherever ResNet is available on campus, including the Memorial Union, Union South, the J.F. Friedrick Center, the Fluno Center and Lowell Hall. Direct T.V. users can also access the network.
Ticket prices for the famed Halloween party on State Street will increase this year.
Over the summer, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, along with other city officials, hiked Halloween ticket prices from $5 to $7 on Saturday, Oct. 27, the day of the event. The $5 tickets were introduced last yearâ??attendance was free before then.
Tuition for resident and nonresident undergraduates at UW System schools will increase by 5.5 percent in the 2007-08 school year, the UW Board of Regents decided Aug. 7.
UW System President Kevin Reilly said the decision, which marks the lowest percentage of tuition increase students have seen in seven years, was made â??in the 11th hour,â? and tuition bills were finally mailed out Aug. 24.
Excitement for Welcome Week is in the air on campus, but the reality for 75 UW-Madison students is quite different.
Ogg Hall, the Campus Master Planâ??s latest edition and the second new campus residence hall in the last 42 years, is open and ready for move-in.
Local college students went back to school this week with many left in limbo as to their financial aid status.
As of June 27, the state stopped dispensing financial aid to low-income students because the state budget hasn’t been finalized, according to a Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers report.
MADISON, Wis. — A new campus residence offers University of Wisconsin-Madison an alternative to regular dorm life with the option of a faith-based lifestyle.
The Pres House Residence is one of the first-of-its-kind apartment buildings in the country. A cross between dorm and apartment living, it is run by the Pres House, a Presbyterian Campus Organization.
MADISON, Wis. — Wednesday marks the start of moving for hundreds of University of Wisconsin-Madison students living on campus.
On Wednesday and Thursday, about 2,500 students and their belongings will be moving into residence halls for the upcoming school year, WISC-TV reported.
“We probably have around 300 Badger Buddies to help us, plus our house fellows, plus all of our full-time staff, plus some of our student employees. So there’s a lot going on and a lot of people helping,” said Paul Evans, director of UW-Madison housing.
It’s goodbye mom and dad, hello college for freshman at the UW. But, move in day involves more than heavy lifting and unpacking.
“I’m really excited,” exclaims Elysha Decker! “I just don’t know how all this will fit in my dorm room.”
The first of more challenges to come for Elysha, who is from Portage.
“It will be an adventure, definitely,” she says. “I’ll learn a lot and have a lot of new experiences.”
Students in UW-Madison residence halls will be able to watch the Big Ten Network this fall under an agreement between the university and the network.
The network also will be available at Memorial Union and Union South, as well as the J.F. Friedrick Center, the Fluno Center and Lowell Hall.
As a new school year begins, University of Wisconsin officials are launching an effort to make students realize how dangerous alcohol can be.
“This is a messaging campaign aimed at incoming freshmen, primarily in the UW Housing dorms,” said Susan Crowley, director of prevention services at University Health Services at UW-Madison.
“We are very concerned about the increase in the number of students transported to detoxification with very high blood alcohol content. We want to let students know very early in the year about the seriousness of alcohol incapacitation.”
It is not just students, teachers and coaches who gear up for the school year and football weekends. Detox does too.
“We know we will have an increased number on football weekends. We’re prepared. We have to be,” said Melody Music-Twilla, who runs the Dane County Detox Center on Industrial Drive on Madison’s southeast side for Tellurian Ucan, Inc.
Between those sent to detox by Madison Police officers and University of Wisconsin-Madison campus police, Music-Twilla expects all 29 beds in the 24-48 hour triage center to be filled before the end of the night Saturday.
There are three things that can waylay the well-oiled machine of move-in day at UW-Madison, says Associate Dean of Students Kevin Helmkamp: Weather, an elevator breaking down and some guy who’s pulling a trailer for the first time in his life.
As students return to campuses across the nation, college administrators face the first test of their efforts to inoculate campuses against the sort of horrific violence that hit Virginia Tech last April, when a student killed 32 other students and faculty members, then committed suicide.
University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema closed the door on any possibility fifth-year senior defensive end Jamal Cooper will return to the team.
Bielema announced Friday in a news release that Cooper “had been suspended indefinitely from the program for conduct detrimental to the team,” which appeared to leave open the possibility of Cooper returning to the team at some point. However, the same release also said Cooper “will have access to full academic support services, but will no longer be a part of the football program in any other way.”
Bielema cleared up the confusion during his Monday news conference.
MADISON – Several thousand college students around the state are still awaiting word on financial aid through the need-based Wisconsin Higher Education Grant program with only about a week to go before classes start in the University of Wisconsin System.
They are waiting for enactment of a new state budget, which is now in a legislative conference committee.
(MADISON) In downtown Madison, more than 30 surveillance cameras are scheduled to be installed and tested soon as a way to crack down on crime. But there are already mixed feelings on the camerasâ?? use and effectiveness.
Nearly $390,000 has been spent on the venture, which will set up a video monitoring system along State Street, University Avenue, and other areas police want to watch closely. Backers, like UW-Madison sophomore Becky Layman, say the cameras provide them and others with some peace of mind. UW grad student Nathan Vernau says heâ??s not entirely sure how effective the cameras will be, but says they can help police investigate incidents like the recent disappearance and murder of a UW coed and the shooting death of a Minnesota man during a fight on State Street.
University of Wisconsin men’s basketball player Kevin Gullikson received a citation early Saturday morning for underage drinking. According to the UW Police Department, he was picked up at 1:25 a.m. and had an alcohol level of .209, more than twice the legal limit.
Gullikson, 20, pleaded no contest in Sept. 2006 to an underage drinking charge.
Dear Editor: As a resident of Wisconsin and student body president of UW-Eau Claire, I am frustrated and troubled by the biennial budget process this year.
We are one of the last states in the country to finalize a 2007-2009 biennial budget and we are nearly two months behind. Significant problems are occurring because of this complacency.
Currently, there are thousands of UW students unsure if they can attend school in September because the Wisconsin Higher Education Grant has not been determined. Also, the UW System Board of Regents had to set tuition with no indication of what the state’s allocation would be.
With about a week to go before classes start at UW System schools, nearly 3,800 college students around the state are still waiting to hear what kind of financial aid they will — or will not — receive for the upcoming school year.
Jamal Cooper continues to find ways into University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema’s doghouse.
Bielema announced Friday that Cooper, a fifth-year senior defensive end, has been suspended indefinitely from the program for conduct detrimental to the team. According to a news release, Cooper “will have access to full academic support services, but will no longer be a part of the football program in any other way.”
MADISON, Wis. — It was move-in day for UW students.
The new Ogg Hall opened its doors to 615 students.
The â??New Oggâ? is UWâ??s newest residence hall, which replaces the historic Ogg Hall towers.
Yet another high-end, high-rise apartment building could be going up soon on the UW-Madison campus.
A local real estate group is proposing a 14-story, 169-unit apartment building at the corner of West Johnson and Mills streets.
The project at 1022 W. Johnson would require demolition of two older homes while also encompassing an existing surface parking lot. Parking — always an issue on campus — would be provided underground with space for mopeds, bicycles and 125 vehicles.
Dear Editor: Currently, there are 178 eligible UW-Whitewater students waiting to find out if they will receive financial aid for the coming school year through the Wisconsin Higher Education Grant (WHEG) program. WHEG is a state-funded grant available to eligible undergraduate Wisconsin residents who have demonstrated financial need.
These students are waiting for funding because of the delay in approving the state budget.
Convicted killer Ralph Armstrong has waited 27 years for a new trial, and now may have to wait a little longer.
Armstrong was convicted of the 1980 killing and sexual assault of Charise Kamps, 19, a UW student from Platteville who was found murdered in her apartment on West Gorham Street.
Designers of the UW-Madison’s new Ogg Hall, which opens to 615 students next week, have thought of pretty much everything — security, academics, water conservation, art.
The six-story residence hall at North Park and Dayton streets cost $28 million to construct, with costs for design, green space, art and demolition of the old Ogg bringing the total cost to $36 million.
Matzo ball soup and kugel will soon be sharing a spot at the table with cheeseburgers and shellfish at UW-Madison.
A box brimming with favorite photographs will travel with Grace Duray, 18, when she moves across the country next month to start classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The 2007 Tumwater High School graduate also will bring picture frames and a bulletin board she’ll use to make an unfamiliar dorm room feel like home. But Duray decided against taking along many other South Sound mementos in part because she knows her living quarters will be small. Plus, traveling with extra luggage isn’t any fun.
Next Wednesday, many incoming students to UW Madison will be moving into a new Ogg Hall.
The new residence hall on the university campus opened its doors Thursday for tours.
615 students will call the new dorm home this fall semester, and it is filled to capacity.
As students head to the nation’s college campuses, relishing their new independence, criminal prosecutions in the deaths of two young men are a sober reminder of how quickly alcohol-fueled “fun” can spin out of control.
Charges were filed this month against students and administrators linked to the recent fire death of a 19-year-old sophomore at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and the alcohol poisoning of a 18-year-old freshman at Rider University in Trenton, N.J
“Freakfest 2007,” the informal name for the Halloween party on State Street this fall, was the first item on the city’s Street Use Staff Team meeting Wednesday morning.
As in 2006, the party will be fenced and gated along the length of State Street and access permitted only with a ticket — this being the city’s response to the early-morning disturbances of the previous four years. Unlike last year, though, the event organizer is not the city, but Frank Productions, a national concert promoter based in Madison.
Advocates for the homeless, anxious to inch up their issues on the local political agenda, are stepping in early to lobby for more funding.
The Dane County Homeless Services Consortium, a group of more than 30 agencies serving the homeless, is asking the county and the city of Madison to boost funding for specific services to keep people in housing and assist those already homeless to a total of more than $4.4 million.
….The death of a homeless man in a Madison park in 2004 spawned a flurry of activity demanding more resources for homeless services, led by a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students who at one point staged a sit-in at Cieslewicz’s office.
University of Wisconsin-Madison administrators will be pleased, but students may be disappointed by the fact that the university was not the No. 1 “party school” in the Princeton Review’s annual rankings.
In fact, the UW didn’t even make the top 20 list, which is developed from a survey of 120,000 students at 366 top colleges in the nation.
….UW-Madison also came in 16th for Best College Newspaper and 18th for Students Pack the Stadiums. The Princeton Review also summarized what UW-Madison students say about the university….
A Madison man, out on bail for allegedly beating and trying to rape a University of Wisconsin student last August, was charged Tuesday with lewd and lascivious behavior and two counts of felony bail jumping for allegedly exposing himself to two women last Thursday.
Federal officials on Tuesday warned students moving to college to take steps to protect themselves from the rising number of fires on and near campuses.
At a media briefing on the University of Maryland campus, officials released a new National Fire Protection Association report that cites an increase in college housing fires: 3,300 in 2005, up from 1,800 in 1998. From 2002 through 2005, there were 39 deaths and about 400 injuries in dormitories, fraternities, sororities and barracks as a result of fires.
But the report, which was based on estimates from two national databases, did not include off-campus fires. USA TODAY reported last year that off-campus fires were the most deadly.
WE FIND IT amusing that a growing number of college and university officials are upset by the annual rankings produced by U.S. News & World Report magazine.
In most respects, the magazine is a distant third behind its competitor newsweeklies, Time magazine and Newsweek magazine. But once a year, when it comes to college rankings, U.S. News is second to none. At least on college campuses.
Forget Paris. Today’s kids increasingly want to speak the languages of Beijing and Baghdad.
In Wisconsin and nationwide, the study of Chinese and Arabic remains dwarfed by long-taught counterparts like French, German and Spanish. But they are gaining a toehold.
While some dismiss the trend as short-lived, akin to the Sputnik-era rush to learn Russian, and some media reports suggest a post-September 11 wave of interest in Arabic has already waned, others foresee a long-term shift.
For most students starting college this fall, bottled water is taken for granted, stadiums and rock tours have always had corporate names, Nelson Mandela has always been free and phone calls have never been private.
For the class of 2011, instantly updating autobiographies on “Facebook ” or “MySpace ” is as common as being a latchkey kid or having nutritional information on food labels. “Off the hook ” has nothing to do with phones and being “lame ” has more to do with being dumb or inarticulate than being disabled.
This might come as a shock to those of you who spent a few years and a few dollars earning your college degree at a University of Wisconsin campus, so have a seat and take a deeeeeeeeep breath.
Here goes: A ranking of the nation’s top party schools was published Monday, and NO WISCONSIN SCHOOL WAS ON THE LIST.
No, seriously. This really happened.
Somehow, Wisconsin escaped yet another national survey’s notoriety that would have only cemented the state’s reputation as a heavy-drinking, hard-partying mecca for college-age folks.
She got bed bugs three different times — the itching nearly drove her bonkers, she says — and is still taking medication for a stomach parasite she apparently got from the drinking water.
She spent every weekend for four months hauling bags of sand and gravel, sawing hundreds of rebars by hand and mixing concrete while helping construct a new crafts workshop for the Mantay Women’s Housing Project, which provides jobs, education, health care and a secure place to live for 15 single Peruvian moms — all victims of rape….
There was nothing unusual about Kim Royston’s journey across the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River on the evening of Aug. 1.
It was a slow ride, but that wasn’t shocking considering the brutal combination of rush-hour traffic and closed lanes on the bridge due to construction. At least Royston had company; three of his buddies were along for the ride, helping him enjoy his final few days of freedom in his hometown of Minneapolis before he reported back to Madison for the start of the University of Wisconsin football team’s fall training camp.
English or engineering? Business or biology? When college students select their majors, a variety of factors influence them. Maybe healing the sick or teaching children is their passion. Perhaps musical or artistic skill directs them toward the arts. And some students don’t settle on a course of study until sophomore or junior year.
MADISON â?? Alaska teen Jessica Schallock was thrilled when a wealthy neighbor offered her a $96,000 scholarship in June so she could study music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But then she got the bad news: On-campus housing was full. Schallock would have to find her own place to live in a city 3,600 miles from home.
Many college students are moving back to Madison and others are getting ready to head off to their campuses for the semester. There’s a few things students should keep in mind to keep them safe.
With Iowa’s first-in-the nation presidential caucuses less than five months away, some UW-Madison students are already hoping to spread their Obamania to the neighboring Hawkeye State.
Even before classes start, the campus chapter of Students for Obama has begun recruiting volunteers from Madison to contact their peers in Iowa in support of Democratic U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid in the critical Jan. 14 vote. The Obama group is the first to begin organizing for next year’s presidential race; typically, the UW has been a major source of votes for Democratic candidates.
Madison-based movie producer Nick Langholff helped make a dream come true for UW-Madison senior Justin Daering this week.
Daering, a Verona native, had saved some money and was trying to make a film, but things weren’t working out. So Langholff stepped in to help.
“We met at my office above Mickey’s Tavern and I told him that I get to spend whatever amount he has, however I can. I ‘ll hire everybody,” Langholff says. “And I guaranteed him, It will feel like you ‘re spending three to four times the amount.'”
