Category: Campus life

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.

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.

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.

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

In an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 during the spring semester, UW-Madison will greatly expand its mandatory testing regime, require proof of up-to-date negative tests and call on students to restrict their movement upon returning to the Madison area, the university announced Friday.

South Asian organizations explain students’ connections to Punjab, how issue impacts all UW students.

In a letter to UW-Madison leadership, the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA) called on the university to provide serious financial relief for students, citing university policy concerning segregated fees and international student fees, as well as the current telecommuting policy affecting international student workers, as crises that “mark the difference between eating and going hungry” for some.

On Oct. 26, Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced a projected budget shortfall of $320 million through June of 2021, due to lost revenues and increased expenses from the pandemic. UW says some of that shortfall has been addressed through cost-saving measures, including a first round of unpaid furloughs for employees that ran from May 15 through Oct. 31, 2020.

Thousands of University of Wisconsin-Madison students will receive their degrees this weekend. Unfortunately, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic means they will not be able to celebrate in a traditional fashion.

UW to allow ASM reps to be paid for international work, ASM reps express disappointment after UW Dean leaves meeting early.

In its final meeting of the semester, the Associated Students of Madison (ASM) approved legislation Tuesday night supporting international telecommuters and calling for a Pass/Fail and Satisfactory Disruption/Non-Satisfactory Disruption option for the Fall 2020 semester.

UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) Professor Michael Wagner focused specifically on a “pre-election” swing state and democratic agenda survey conducted by the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR), an SJMC research group dedicated “to understand[ing] the communication ecology and political culture in Wisconsin over the last decade.”

’This [policy] is specifically targeted towards students who are currently on international soil — the vast majority being international students,’ ASM Chair says

The Student Services Finance Committee met Monday to introduce their internal budget and approve Student Judiciary’s FY22 budget. SSFC was also going to vote on the Student Activities Center Governing Board budget but voted to push the decision to next week.

The Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition hosted a virtual awards ceremony Friday awarding UW-Madison “for exemplifying the SLSV Coalition’s Guiding Principle of Removing Barriers and Increasing Access.” The award title is shared with Alabama A&M University, an institution also recognized for its removal of barriers impacting voter suppression.

For University of Wisconsin-Madison senior Joel Baraka, there was one question that always lingered in the back of his mind: What can I do today to improve the life of another child?

Bars played a critical role in University of Wisconsin-Madison’s coronavirus outbreak this fall, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found.

Shortly after trips to a cluster of bars near Witte and Sellery residence halls spiked in early September, the two dorms saw large outbreaks of COVID-19, MIT economics professor and physician Jeffrey Harris found in a recent study.

According to an email from Human Resource officials at the university, officials were unaware of student workers telecommuting from outside the country until recently and will pay students for any hours already logged — though they did not specify when. However, per a decision made by university HR in early July, students telecommuting from outside the country will not be able to hold hourly positions going forward.

Students were selected for the task force by an application process. Several positions on the committee were held for people that represented different student groups — such as first-year students, international students and house fellows.

As a relatively new group on campus, BIPOC Coalition co-founder Tarah Stangler said the organization is trying to gauge what students would like to see the group accomplish in upcoming semesters.

Council also passed resolution asking UW to decriminalize marijuana possession on campus to match Madison laws.

’We remain committed to supporting survivors and to responding promptly and fairly to allegations of sexual misconduct,’ UW spokeswoman says.

GivingTuesday, a self proclaimed holiday that falls every year on the Tuesday after the shopping mania of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” encourages people to donate to charitable causes. This year, UW-Madison has made it easy for Badgers to “do good” and refocus their efforts on their community.

As one of the only tuition fee that is decided and allocated by elected and appointed student officers, GSSF money serves the unique role of providing funding to eligible registered student organizations on campus.

Video: Most UW-Madison students packed up to head home for Thanksgiving and finish the semester virtually. However, positive COVID tests are leaving some stuck here.