Echoing his childhood board game, “Clue”, the dispatcher’s voice was clear as cab driver Ramy Renor headed for the Karaoke Kid to pick up a fare about 1:30 Friday night.
“On State with a snake.”
“Too bad I can’t take that,” the 34-year-old, 6′ 1″ woman, who has been driving for Union Cab for seven and a half years, said. “I’ve never picked up a snake, but I did pick up ‘Whitesnake’ once,” she added.
The University of Wisconsin System is asking campuses to look at ways to lower the cost of textbooks after a report showed disparities in book costs among university locations.
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has upheld an informal opinion on the University of Wisconsinâ??s admissions policy, which includes race as one of many factors to be considered.
One of the Republican legislators who sought the opinion, Sen. Glenn Grothmann of West Bend, says he is â??disappointedâ? with Van Hollenâ??s ruling and promises to introduce legislation to stop the policy.
His effort will only make it more difficult to ensure that UW enrollment reflects the state population as a whole.
LA CROSSE, Wis. — The city of La Crosse has started to build barriers to help stop the spate of students drowning in the Mississippi River after drinking.
Work began Friday on building gates, rails and chains at three entrances to a levee at the city’s Riverside Park, which is two blocks from downtown bars.
GREEN BAY (AP) — The car pulled from the Fox River with a missing 21-year-old student inside was found 95 feet from the shoreline, suggesting there was “some speed involved” as it plunged into the river, police said Friday.
A prominent senator proposed legislation last week that would have required some colleges to buy tools to curtail illegal file sharing. But at the last minute, outrage by college officials forced the senator to back down.
The proposal was made by Sen. Harry M. Reid, a Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader, as an amendment to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. (See related article, Page A21.) The amendment called for the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America to provide annual lists of the 25 institutions that received the most notices identifying cases of copyright infringement, usually by students passing around music and movies. Colleges would be ordered to plan a “a technology-based deterrent” and submit those plans for review by the secretary of education.
A major worry was that no software could stop illegal file sharing without interrupting legitimate file sharing as well. “We don’t know of any such software that’s reliable,” said Brian Rust, communications manager in the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s information-technology division. “We would not want to solve the illegal-file-sharing problem by creating a whole other problem that could hinder a student’s ability to learn.”
MADISON, Wis. — The state attorney general said a new University of Wisconsin System freshman admissions policy requiring an applicant’s race to be considered is legal.
The policy adopted by the Board of Regents requires a comprehensive review of each applicant seeking admissions. Academic factors are the most important but other factors such as race, income and special talents must be considered to help achieve diversity.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen told lawmakers Thursday that the consideration of race does not violate a 1974 law that says no race-based tests shall be allowed in admissions requirements.
The Attorney General says it’s legal for the UW to use race as an admissions factor. One lawmaker says change the law.
Republican Senator Glenn Grothman is not really surprised at the Attorney General’s opinion.
He says it’s difficult to get anyone to declare what he calls reverse discrimination illegal. So, he wants to make a new law to spell it out.
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Green Bay student who disappeared two weeks ago was inside her car that plunged into the Fox River near downtown Green Bay, police said Friday.
An autopsy positively identified Mahalia Xiong, Capt. Karl Fleury said at a news conference….After the recovery of the woman’s body, Brown County Medical Examiner Al Klimek said preliminary indications suggested an accidental death with no sign of foul play, pending results of the autopsy and toxicology tests.
As dozens of Hmong met with University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley Thursday night, one of them asked for a public apology for remarks by law professor Leonard Kaplan that offended some students early this year. Others said Kaplan should be fired.
University of Wisconsin secondary coach Kerry Cooks can still recall the anxiety and culture shock that he experienced when he left home for the first time as a college freshman. Cooks, an Iowa football recruit, was a long way from his roots and comfort zone, too. Home was Irving, Texas for Cooks, the product of a middle-class upbringing. While making the adjustment to a different environment and lifestyle in a different region of the country, Cooks, an African-American, didn’t see many people who looked like him in Iowa City.
Not guilty pleas were entered for UW sophomore running back Lance Smith to charges of misdemeanor battery and disorderly conduct (Thursday) stemming from a July 14 incident between him and his girlfriend at his Randall Avenue apartment.
Wisconsin’s attorney general issued an informal legal opinion Thursday that the UW System freshman admissions policy does not violate the state law prohibiting the use of “tests based on race.”
But Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen cautioned the University of Wisconsin System to ensure that each application for admission is given individualized consideration in order to comply with federal constitutional requirements.
One of the gaming design group’s lead instructors at a New Berlin technology camp for youth was the aptly named Alex Games, a former high school teacher and software engineer. Now he’s researching the educational application of video design curriculum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“This is more than playing games,” said Games, who explained that students had to work on their own, then team up and decide how to combine their products to make a more effective and complex game. Students also had to write critiques.
Dear Editor: Madison Metro’s No. 80 bus route sounded like a dream come true for a University of Wisconsin-Madison student: A free bus that circles the UW campus and comes around every eight minutes sounds like a blessing since the UW campus is almost 1,000 acres.
Being guaranteed not to have to wait more than eight minutes before another bus arrives means the world when a student is at the bus stop in below-zero temperatures. However, actual experience may bring a change of view of the No. 80 bus route.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Tuesday announced the establishment of a charitable trust for scholarships, funded by the $3 million donation of a former electronics company building.
Dear Editor: UW-Madison is enduring a devastating financial crisis. Recent articles have focused on the exodus of many top faculty, but another aspect is equally important: Our ability to fund graduate education is collapsing. UW-Madison has some of the world’s premier graduate programs, and to continue to excel at teaching, research and service to the state of Wisconsin, we must continue to attract and keep top graduate students.
Monica Macaulay, UW linguistics professor
Joseph Salmons, director, UW Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures
STEVENS POINT, Wis. (AP) – A 59-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point died from a heart attack in Krakow, Poland, during a group trip to Europe.
David Pupp of Marshfield had been participating in the annual summer College of Natural Resources European Environmental Studies Seminar, a six-week program. He enrolled in the fall 2006 semester at UWSP as an urban forestry major.
Big Brother will soon be watching for crime in downtown Madison.
The plan calls for video cameras to multiple areas of State Street and University Avenue.
Police hope to catch some of the crime that frequents the high-trafficked area.
In presenting 17 high school students and a recent high school graduate with a rare, close-up look at one of the science world’s most cutting-edge fields, the WiCell Summer Science Camp also hopes to ignite their interest in pursuing a career in the sciences.
Every spring during his academic career at UW-Madison, Ying Chan makes sure he is sitting at a table at the Memorial Union terrace on the warm day when the ice on Lake Mendota disappears for the season.
To him, the moment has grown to symbolize the strong connection in Wisconsin between everyday life and the natural world. “Wisconsin has a love affair going on with the environment,” Ying said.
MANY OF you probably already suspected that you lived in the greatest college sports town in the universe, or at least the Big Ten, and you didn’t need a national radio host to confirm it. But last week, one did.
I finally got a chance to listen to Scott Van Pelt’s recent ode to Madison on ESPN Radio, and it was an amazing thing to hear. Van Pelt sounded like a local tourism official who occasionally takes a second drink.
It started with college kids, spread to high schoolers and is now infiltrating communities across the country. It is Facebook and it has taken hold.
Family members of a missing UW-Green Bay student say they’re starting to lose hope for her safe return.
Family and friends have been hitting the pavement and going online in their search for 21-year-old Mahalia Xiong. She was last seen about a week ago after bowling with friends in Ashwaubenon.
It’s been a bittersweet summer for Jolene Anderson, who won her third gold medal earlier this month with Team USA basketball.
The decision to play in the FIBA U21 World Championships in Moscow was a tough one for the senior-to-be with the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team, who normally doesn’t turn down a chance to compete.
Anderson learned in late May that her grandmother, Nancy Rantala, was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and the Port Wing native was torn about whether she should make the trips to France and Russia to compete in team trials and the championships.
By football season, Madison police hope to have eight wireless video surveillance cameras monitoring the lower State Street and University Avenue area near the UW-Madison campus to keep an eye on late-night revelers.
Is downtown Madison safe?
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray says, “From my perspective as chief police it’s a resounding yes.”
A review of the last 6 months shows a decrease in crime downtown. City leaders credit it to the downtown safety initiative.
“The results are that it’s working, the downtown safety initiative is working, the numbers bare that out, dramatic decreases,” says Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz.
MADISON, Wis. — Madison police, business leaders and safety experts from University of Wisconsin-Madison announced a new safety initiative for downtown Madison on Wednesday.
As part of the initiative, surveillance cameras could be installed downtown to help detour crime, WISC-TV reported.
The safety effort is being renewed after the recent disappearance of Kelly Nolan. The UW-Whitewater student was last seen partying in downtown Madison and was later found slain.
Madison community leaders are using crime statistics to try to dispel any notion of a dangerous downtown, in the wake of college student Kelly Nolan’s disappearance and murder.
Nolan, 22, a UW-Whitewater student, disappeared after a night of socializing downtown, and was murdered. Nolan was last heard from, around bar time. “Downtown Madison at bar time is a very different downtown Madison than many of the Madisonians and many of the UW-Madison community might know,” said UW Dean of Students Lori Berquam.
Lance Smith, the Badgers second leading rusher from last season, has been suspended from the team after violating the UW Department of Athletics’ Student Athlete Discipline Policy, Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez announced Wednesday afternoon.
Smith is suspended from competition and practice pending the availability of further information relating to his case.
The district attorney’s office and the University of Wisconsin both plan to do more fact-finding before casting judgment on Lance Smith.
The sophomore running back was released from jail Tuesday after a court commissioner allowed him to sign a recognizance bond while police continue to investigate an incident this weekend in which Smith allegedly battered his girlfriend and took money from her.
University of Wisconsin running back Lance Smith was arrested after a weekend dispute with his girlfriend over cab fare, Madison police said.
The 19-year-old Warren, Ohio, native was being held today in the Dane County Jail on tentative charges of false imprisonment, robbery and battery as he awaits formal charges.
Smith is subject to the UW’s student-athlete disciplinary policy, and faces possible suspension from the team. Athletic department spokesman Justin Doherty said Monday afternoon that the school is aware of the incident and is “in the process of gathering facts about what happened” before making any decision on Smith’s status.
Piper Smith has had one recurring, frightening thought since the murdered body of Kelly Nolan was found Monday: That could have been me.
For most of last year, Smith, a 21-year-old UW-Madison senior, drank to excess almost every night on State Street, occasionally going home with strangers and sometimes waking up the next day not knowing where she was or what had happened, she said.
Friends and family of a missing University of Wisconsin-Green Bay student are putting together a reward fund for anyone who has information on her whereabouts.
Mahalia Xiong, 21, disappeared after a night out at a bowling alley early Friday.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — A University of Wisconsin-Green Bay student leader disappeared this weekend after a night out with friends.
Mahalia Xiong, 21, was reported missing after she didn’t return from a night of bowling and drinking at Ashwaubenon Bowling Alley.
If universities are to prevent a repeat of the Virginia Tech shooting, the first thing they need to do is ditch the idealistic notion of campuses as a haven, said UW-Madison Police Chief Sue Riseling. Then they need a multi-pronged strategy of prevention, intervention and response.
Students at UW System schools likely will face a tuition increase of at least 6 percent, a member of the Board of Regents said Friday.
At UW-Madison, that would mean about $400 more per year for resident undergraduates.
George Ceremuga spent the last week in June helping his father, Dr. George Ceremuga, Sr. and 10 medical students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison conduct health clinics in remote areas of Guatemala.
UW students say they’re being more cautious following the murder of 22-year-old Kelly Nolan.
Her body was found Monday–two weeks after she disappeared after a night of drinking downtown.
But, when 27 News visited State Street Sataurday night we saw women walking alone, talking on cell phones–all things Madison police officers say are risky behaviors.
Police also say downtown Madison is, for the most part, safe.
MADISON, Wis. — A University of Wisconsin-Madison senior participating in a study-abroad program in South Africa was killed in a vehicle crash on July 1 during a guided tour in Botswana.
Andrea Sperka, of West Allis, had completed her spring semester-aboard program and was traveling with a friend to the neighboring countries of Zambia and Botswana, according to the news release from UW-Madison.
MADISON – Kelly Nolan’s death has people in Madison thinking twice before walking home alone.”You hear about that and you take an extra precaution,” University of Wisconsin student Brooke Saias said.
Especially knowing Kelly Nolan’s killer is still on the loose.”I make sure I’m always with a friend and if not I’ll call someone to walk home with,” Saias added.
Since Kelly went missing three weeks ago along State Street, UW Madison’s Safe Nightime Services has been extremely busy. The service offers students and staff free walks and rides home at night.
MADISON, Wis. — Thousands of University of Wisconsin college students from across the state might be heading to college this fall without knowing if they can afford it.That’s because the battle over the state budget has prompted some officials to put all state financial aid grant applications on hold.
College students returning to campuses this fall will see steep increases in the cost of prescription birth-control pills as a result of regulations issued last week by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Making Madison more bike- and pedestrian-friendly, cutting taxes and eliminating Lisa Link Peace Park were three of the ideas that middle schoolers presented to the mayor Thursday after working as city planners for four weeks through a UW-Madison computer simulation.
Associated Students of Madison is appealing a decision by University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley to refuse to allow student organizations to use fees paid by students to rent off-campus offices.
A Web site established to aid in the search for UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan has become a condolence book of sorts for the young woman’s family after the 22-year-old’s body was found Monday north of the village of Oregon.
….”Rest in peace, Kelly. I didn’t know you, but because of what happened my group of friends has formed a buddy system that we are not going to break,” Cassandra Hein of Madison wrote on Tuesday night.
“We decided that every time we go out, one of us will be sober, and we will take turns and if someone gets angry that we won’t let them go with someone, then we will either take them straight home or call the police and have them escorted home.
“There will be no more thinking, ‘Oh, nothing will happen to me.'”
In an era of rising gas prices, a team of UW engineering students is trying to help a car company build a vehicle that gets better gas mileage. It’s part of General Motors Car X Challenge. As part of the multi-year contest, teams from 17 universities are taking a 2005 Chevrolet Equinox and trying to increase its mileage by 50-percent.
With the changes the UW team has made so far, faculy advisor Glenn Bower said the SUV can get about 40 miles to the gallon in lab tests, a little more than 30 in real time road tests.
Responding to a published report on freshman John Clay’s eligibility, University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema issued a statement Tuesday denying that anything has been resolved yet.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday that Clay, a running back from Racine Park, was ineligible.
Investigators today continued the painstaking work of analyzing a wooded area where the probable remains of Kelly Nolan were found Monday morning.
“They’ll have a team of police officers and detectives who are literally going to be on their hands and knees, going shoulder to shoulder, going through a grassy area near the woods,” Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain said today.
Coroner’s officials have yet to make a positive identification of the body found on private property off of Schneider Drive near its intersection with County MM north of Oregon. Indeed, as of this morning, police had yet to approach the body, for fear they might disturb valuable evidence in finding a suspect.
This is why parents live frightened lives.
Police said Monday they found a body in a field near Oregon after a search by more than 100 police officers that began at 4:30 a.m. Monday. Authorities could not confirm the body was that of Kelly Nolan, the 22-year-old UW-Whitewater student who disappeared June 23 after spending an evening drinking with her friends in downtown Madison. But Madison Police Department spokesman Joel DeSpain acknowledged the massive search was undertaken in a hope of finding items connected with Nolan.
The grisly discovery Monday of a body believed to be that of Kelly Nolan, who disappeared after a night of bar-hopping Downtown, has left some State Street regulars uneasy.
Stephanie Willette, 21, who is taking summer classes at UW-Madison, said she was a “little bit alarmed” when she first heard about Nolan’s abduction but wasn’t initially worried about her own safety.
UW-MADISON assistant professor of theater Patrick Sims was on a stage in Utah Monday night, acting in “10 Perfect,” the one person show he wrote based on the life of James Cameron, who survived a lynching as a young man and later founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee.
The play — which had a reading at the Madison Rep last November — was scheduled for performances Monday night and July 16 at the Caine Lyric Theatre in Logan, Utah. Sims, who last spring starred in the Madison Rep’s production of “Home,” is working this summer with the Old Lyric Repertory Company in Logan. “10 Perfect” is being directed by UW-Madison grad student and adjunct theater instructor Sheri Williams Pannell.
Police discovered a body Monday that they believe is Kelly Nolan, the 22-year-old woman who disappeared June 23 after a night of bar hopping in downtown Madison, in a wooded area at the edge of this capital city suburb.
MADISON, Wis. — In the wake of Kelly Nolan’s disappearance and probable death, some are questioning the safety of downtown Madison, the last spot Nolan was seen alive.
Madison city officials told News 3 it’s too early to make assumptions about the safety of downtown Madison.
“There’s no way to deny something as scary and tragic as a woman being killed,” said common council president Mike Verveer. “Who knows where she was killed of course, but last seen in downtown Madison will lead to this perception problem that downtown Madison has, that we are an unsafe, scary place to be.”
The search for a missing 22-year-old woman from Waunakee came to what may be a tragic end this morning outside the village of Oregon when police found a body during a search for University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan.
Police are treating the case as a homicide.
Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain said at a news conference this morning that there is no positive identification yet that the body is that of Nolan, who has been missing since June 23, but the remains were found during a massive search for her on private property near a quarry northeast of Schuster Road, which forms the eastern boundary of the village.
University of Wisconsin System students will have to wait until next month to find out how much their tuition for the coming academic year will cost.
The UW System Board of Regents announced Friday it will delay a decision on tuition increases from next week until early August because of uncertainty surrounding the state budget.
The regents said they are shooting for a 3.3 percent increase, which would boost tuition by $198 at UW-Madison and $150 at most other campuses. But they said the increase could grow if lawmakers do not fully fund raises for faculty and staff or if they cut funding in other parts of the system budget.
University of Wisconsin System students will have to wait until next month to find out how much their tuition for the coming academic year will cost.
State Street partiers know the rules: Stay in groups. Count your drinks. Walk in well-lit areas. Be alert.
But once the drinks start flowing, it’s common to feel a sense of invincibility – especially with a trusty cell phone at hand.
Maria Wittman of Appleton woke up during finals week at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, ready to go to a review for her math exam. She checked her e-mail to confirm the review still was scheduled but was startled by an e-mail from the registrar’s office telling her she had been subpoenaed for illegally sharing music online.
“The purpose of this letter is to notify you that the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Office of the Registrar has received a valid subpoena for the release of your education records,” the e-mail said.
With graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison just months away, Andrea Sperka had reached a decision on her future after college while studying abroad this past spring in Cape Town, South Africa, her mother, Carol Sperka, said Sunday.
“She was going to tell us all the stuff she had decided on when she got home” in the next few weeks, Carol Sperka said. “She was going to tell me where she was headed, but we didn’t get that far.”
That conversation with her parents never occurred, because Sperka was killed in a car crash on July 1 in Botswana.
