In her latest book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” Isabel Wilkerson details a moment from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s trip to India in 1959, when he realized that India’s caste system was not unique to one country, but mirrored a similar illness in American society.
Day one of the spring semester at UW-Madison also meant day one of new, drop-in COVID testing — which started out a little rocky for sophomores Brian Pfeffer and Madison Tessler.
“I don’t think it’s that bad. I think the appointments made it easier to manage,” Madison Tessler, UW-Madison sophomore said. “I think it’s going to be hard to avoid lines.”
UHS, UWPD will discuss integration of mental health care professionals into responding to mental health situations.
Wilkerson’s recent book ’Caste’ looks at how advent of slavery led to caste system that continues to exist in today’s United States.
UW releases statement claiming ASM’s legislation takes legal liberties, ASM Chair refutes legality claims.
ASM Chair Matthew Mitnick maintains that the organization’s ultimate goal this past fall was to elevate the voices of students previously left out of important conversations and decision-making processes at UW-Madison.
Madison should finally take city buses off of State Street and turn the entire length of the street into a pedestrian mall. This would allow shops and restaurants to take over more public space outside, where the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus is much lower than inside.
University of Wisconsin System campuses are planning to significantly increase COVID-19 testing during the spring semester. But many students at UW-Madison will be tested twice as often as those at the state’s 25 other universities and branch campuses. In addition, new federal research shows tests used to detect outbreaks at UW System’s other 25 campuses are more likely to miss positive cases than the type of tests being used at the state’s flagship university.
Undergraduate students living in certain areas downtown will be required to be tested twice per week using a new saliva testing method, and access to university buildings will be restricted to those who can prove they are up-to-date on their tests and have not tested positive.
If you take a look at the Safer Badger app in the App Store, it’s pretty clear that some University of Wisconsin – Madison students and staff don’t like it. A large majority of the reviews are one star, with people complaining about glitches, not being able to schedule a test or see the new saliva-based test results. Reviewers called it “embarrassing” and “pointless.”
“What we realized after about three weeks of about pilot or soft launch testing is that we believe we can move people through the test sights more quickly and reduce wait times if we move to a drop in system,” said Meredith McGlone, UW-Madison spokesperson.
UW-Madison’s University Health Services (UHS) is working on a collaborative effort with UW-Madison Police Department (UWPD), University Housing and the Dean of Students Office to enhance the campus’s response to mental health crises.
UW Madison noted that people will now use the Safer Badgers app on the day they want to go get tested to figure out which testing sites have the shortest wait time.
Students can view available testing facilities in the Safer Badgers app, where different colored symbols will be used to indicate estimated wait times at each of the 14 on-campus testing facilities. Students will need to update their Safer Badgers app anytime after Saturday, Jan. 23 at 8:00 p.m. to access these new updates.
Officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have launched their new saliva-based COVID-19 testing program which, once in full swing next week, will take the campus from conducting around 12,000 tests per week to 82,000.
In one of the first campus-wide emails of the new year, UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank shared some new, slightly odd wisdom for the semester ahead: “Pool your drool.”
“I think the combination of both the testing strategy and the technology will, allow us to be more responsive. And, and then, therefore, you will contain the spread, if it should, if we should start to experience it,” said Jake Baggot, Executive Director of University Health Services.
Undergraduate students living in certain areas downtown will be required to be tested twice per week using a new saliva testing method, and access to university buildings will be restricted to those who can prove they are up-to-date on their tests and have not tested positive.
As we prepare to resume classes, we’re going to continue doing our part to curb the spread of the virus. We learned from experience that a high degree of testing, followed by quickly isolating and quarantining those who test positive or were exposed, is key to limiting that spread.
The UW-Madison campus was uncharacteristically quiet as COVID-19 kept students and staff from coming together and pushed back the spring semester’s start to Monday. Just two UW-Madison students were seen in Memorial Union.
Board members raise concerns about legality but ultimately unanimously vote in favor of sponsorship.
UW-Madison is kicking off the Spring semester with a new COVID plan: a saliva-based rapid test is now available to detect cases quickly.
As many Badgers have spent the last few weeks resting and relaxing after the fall semester, students and faculty from the school’s University Health Services have been doing anything but that.
The plan is based off of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s SHIELD program, and will require students to be tested twice a week during the spring semester. The school will also introduce a new app, which students will use to show proof of a negative test in order to enter campus buildings.
The proposed fund would allocate $2-$4 million directly to students affected financially by the pandemic.
Mitnick will not be running to keep his position with ASM after the spring semester as he prepares to graduate early. Though, before he goes, Mitnick said ASM still has work to do as they lay the foundation for semesters to come and sustain the movements put in motion during ASM’s 27th Session.
With the conclusion of the fall 2020 semester, the University of Wisconsin Madison closes out one of the more tense semesters in campus history, and conflicts between administration and black students activists currently remain unresolved.
MPD is working with agencies including the Wisconsin State Capitol Police, the Dane County Sheriff’s Office, UW-Madison Police Department and State Patrol. The agencies will work together via a “solid, unified command post process,” Wahl said, to coordinate response and share intelligence.
At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, a spokesperson noted that COVID-19 cases rose in every county in the state following Sept. 1, when students came to campus. “As cases of COVID-19 continue at high levels across Wisconsin, UW-Madison remains committed to doing its part to keep transmission low,” the spokesperson said via email. “Despite a rise in cases early in the fall semester — caught and contained quickly thanks to robust testing and rapid efforts to isolate positive students and quarantine those at risk of exposure — campus experienced a low level of cases after the third week of September.” The university also provided 20,000 free tests to the general public.
Though the fall semester is behind them, University of Wisconsin-Madison students plan to continue advocating for both retroactive and future grading accommodations as part of a new academic policy task force.
ASM will introduce legislation on task force to student council Jan. 26.
A new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study has found that the quick test used by UW campuses to regularly test students missed about 1 in 5 positive cases for people who have symptoms.
Just over two weeks before instruction starts on Jan. 25, Blank updated the UW-Madison community with the university’s plans for students’ return to campus in an email.
Associated Students of Madison (ASM) legislation calling to compensate student hourly employees telecommuting from abroad has been accepted by UW-Madison officials for the spring semester.
Following the marches and protests we saw in Madison over the summer, UW-Madison’s Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership performed a survey of students’ understanding of the first amendment. The survey found many do not understand what constitutes protected speech or activity under the First Amendment.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is gearing up to drastically expand testing for spring semester, with more rigorous requirements, 14 testing locations and a mandatory smartphone app.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison received its first 1,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine Monday and plans to complete vaccinations for its highest priority group within two weeks.
A70-ton boulder seen by some students on UW-Madison’s campus as a racist symbol is another step closer to being removed from Observatory Hill.
UW-Madison received its first COVID-19 vaccines on Monday and plans to begin inoculating some employees as soon as Tuesday.
UW is one of five universities in the Big Ten Conference who have not enacted a pass/fail policy.
A nine-story glass tower is taking shape on University Avenue as part of a $100 million addition and renovation to UW-Madison’s chemistry building.
“One of the things we saw in the fall is a spike in cases among students when they moved back to campus,’ said Meredith McGlone, UW spokesperson. To keep this from happening again, the university is implementing the Safer Badgers program in January.
After failing to win city approvals, a developer is offering revised plans for a seven-story apartment building on a street that’s home to many fraternities and sororities near UW-Madison.
The retailer’s newest location sits right next to the University of Wisconsin campus, in the 500 block of University Ave., and the 5,700 sq. ft. store is “specially designed” to serve a downtown community, the company says.
A University of Wisconsin- Madison nursing student gave $930 worth of gas to health care workers on Monday to say thank you for the work they do. “God’s blessed us with money and so I would love to pay it forward as much as I can,” said Mikayla Srnka.
An incident report said a security guard reported smelling smoke from a building on the 1600 block of Linden Drive just before 6 p.m. Officials said fire alarms sounded off as the guard was about to re-enter the building.
Testing will be required at UW-Madison as students return to campus in January. Every student will have to be tested twice weekly. “The goal of this mandatory testing is to identify cases sooner, so folks can take precautions, stop the spread,” said UW-Madison spokesperson Meredith McGlone.
When COVID-19 cases skyrocketed in early September, Chancellor Rebecca Blank knew she had to try something. So on Sept. 9, the fifth day of classes, when the university reported 404 infections of the nearly 5,300 it would accumulate by the end of the semester, she announced a two-week lockdown for two large dorms and a campus-wide pause on face-to-face instruction. “A lot of people thought that we would never recover from that,” she said in an interview on Friday, the final day of the semester. “More than one person has come up to me and said, ‘I thought we’d never get back to in-person classes. I thought you’d have to send everyone home.’ And, you know, we did recover from that.”
We see the three and a half hour games on Saturday.
What we don’t see:
Wisconsin defensive end Matt Henningsen’s bicep torn off and rolled up in his arm after the Michigan game. It required reattachment surgery four weeks ago.
University of Wisconsin System campuses are wrapping up their first full semester amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been anything but normal, and for some first-year students, finding a sense of community on campus has been hampered by heavy restrictions on social gatherings. Mental health experts say that isolation is a problem and has contributed to a myriad of anxieties faced by students.
The university is processing a State Journal public records request submitted Nov. 30 for documents related to Yaeger’s employment and termination. The process typically takes at least a few weeks because state law requires subjects of the records to be notified of the request and given a chance to sue in an attempt to block release of the records.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Discussion Project, started in 2017 to help instructors improve the quality of their classroom discussions, has trained nearly 150 participants since pivoting to virtual learning during the pandemic.
UW-Madison’s students will be more closely monitored next semester.A mobile app called “Safer Badgers” will be students’ and employees’ “key to campus,” representing a “significant change from the fall semester,” Chancellor Rebecca Blank wrote in a Friday email.
Honorlock and other software systems with names like Proctorio, ExamSoft and ProctorU rely on artificial intelligence, facial detection software, browser lockdown tools and eye-tracking technology to flag behaviors that could indicate students are cheating on their exams.
The University of Wisconsin winter commencement ceremony was virtual this year because of the pandemic.The university recognized graduates in a pre-recorded video that aired online Sunday morning.
For students at the University of Wisconsin, the plan for the way breaks are handled are changed drastically for the 2020 holiday season. Students living on campus who went home for Thanksgiving stayed home, finishing the fall semester virtually, returning to the campus for the spring semester.
Although he said the excitement surrounding graduation is not the same this year due to the pandemic, he doesn’t really see that as a bad thing: “I think that it just reminds me that the world needs people that are ready to take on serious issues so, me having a weekend of excitement might have pushed me to reminisce a little more than I should,” said Weigel.
Lavelle shared several life lessons with the graduates and spoke about her time at UW-Madison, which she referred to as the “greatest university to ever grace this planet.”
’It’s the moment that we execute under pressure that’s often remembered the most, but it is the culmination of everything that led to that moment that means the most,’ USWNT player Lavelle says
