UW-Madison houses about 8,000 students on a typical year, but Director of Marketing and Communication for University Housing Brendon Dybdahl said they’re expecting between 7,300 and 7,500 students to live on campus for the 2020-2021 school year.
A survey of staff at UW-Madison shows an overwhelming majority are uncomfortable returning to work on campus this fall.
Seamus Rohrer, 17, will study journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, drawn to the prospect of writing for two student newspapers. He will drive northwest with one of his parents from his New York City home come fall, a plan he had made before the coronavirus outbreak.
In response to an anonymous post on a student-run social media page, University of Wisconsin’s Health Services will explore alternative options to police hospital transportation.
Kathy Cramer, who leads the BadgersVote committee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that group’s activities have shifted to virtual engagement and absentee voting education.
UW-Madison’s University Housing division plans to reopen all 21 of its residential halls next month. The dorms are set to hold between 7,300 and 7,500 undergraduate students and university leaders finalized a series of changes that aim to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between students and out into the community.
As part of its Back to School webinar series to help college and K-12 dining programs get ready for the fall, Food Management held a session titled “How to Start a Delivery Program on Your Campus” on July 21 featuring Peter Testory, director of dining & culinary services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM), and Darin Schluep, director of Associated Students Dining Services at the University of California-Davis (UCD). It was moderated by FM Group Content Director Becky Schilling
With a little over a month before classes start at UW-Madison, university leaders are working on plans to reopen with in person and online classes.
Students from UW-Madison are teaming with non-profit group WISPIRG in an effort to register 1,000 new voters ahead of the fall election.
Quoted: The effort to de-densify campus could have a public health benefit if the extra space is used to spread people out across classrooms and residence halls, said Craig Roberts, an epidemiologist emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a member of the American College Health Association’s COVID-19 task force.
“If the reduction is being done solely for budget reasons, however,” he said, such as to “keep class sizes the same but have fewer classes with fewer instructors, then I don’t think it’s going to make much difference.”
Equipped with a laptop, legal pad and smartphone, Merta Maaneb de Macedo this week called a UW-Madison student whose roommate recently tested positive for COVID-19.
Protesters gathered on Library Mall to say the plan does not take students’ safety into account enough.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has unveiled a series of changes aimed at improving the racial climate on campus, including a mandatory cultural competency workshop for new undergraduate students and a $10 million fundraising campaign to recruit and hire more students and employees of color.
“Today’s announcement is encouraging news for all college students and for American universities,” UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said in a statement. “Universities need flexibility to educate students in the most effective manner possible during the pandemic and international students deserve stability and support as they pursue their degrees here.”
UW-Madison remains committed to preserving elements of in-person teaching, with physical distancing requirements and widespread testing. However, as families and faculty continue to ask more specific questions about what school will look like, the university has about five weeks to hash out the details. “This is a big lift,” Blank said at a University Committee meeting Monday. “We’re going to be running the university in virtually every area differently than it’s ever been run before.”
The rule threatens to upend the legal status of thousands of international students in Wisconsin, including roughly 5,800 on the UW-Madison campus.
In the middle of a pandemic, international college students have needed more support and sympathy ever before, especially as many have been stranded in Madison for months. But in the United States the Trump administration added to their stress and anxiety by issuing an order to strip students of their US visas and deport them if their courses go entirely online.
The University of Wisconsin System has asked the governor for $110 million to fund COVID-19 testing and personal protective equipment, as campuses look to open this fall and the number of coronavirus cases in Wisconsin continues to rise.
The UW Board of Regents unanimously passed the mask mandate Thursday, a few weeks after UW System guidelines recommended masks but stopped short of requiring them.
For Hannah Arbuckle, a summer internship focused on helping people cultivate wild foods at the Bad River Reservation was an opportunity to help the tribe she belongs to.
It was also the University of Wisconsin-Madison senior’s chance to complete her last requirement for graduation.
But when she called her supervisor at the reservation to ask if her internship was still happening, Arbuckle learned the program had been canceled.
Over 1,800 participants joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s virtual panel discussion dedicated to understanding how racism impacts students and alumni engagement in an event titled “Committed to Change: A Call to Action, Understanding How Racism Shows Up and Impacts Students and Alumni Engagement.”
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday that international students who are enrolled in online only classes for the upcoming semester will have to leave the country or risk deportation.
Those guidelines issued Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement say international students would have to leave the country or transfer to another college if their school goes entirely online this fall. Schools had to do that in the spring semester because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Everyone who visits these campus sites will need to wear a mask or face covering and abide by social distancing guidelines.
Thousands of international students pursuing degrees at UW-Madison may be forced to leave the country, risk deportation or transfer to another institution if the university moves all of its classes online this fall in the interest of public health.
Iris Zhou, an 18-year-old from Wuxi in eastern China, has been admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the coming school year, but the earliest visa appointment she could get when she applied in May was in November.
Most recently, Lewis, who earned his doctorate of education from the University of Wisconsin–Stout, was the higher education director at the Ho-Chunk Nation Education Department where he designed a successful work-based learning internship program and increased the annual college graduation rate by 250 percent.
Instead of picking a single day or two-day period to visit campus as in previous years, students set aside a week to complete the online content. During that week, students meet with an adviser over video conference to enroll in courses and engage in other online events about important resources and campus culture.
UW-Madison spokesman John Lucas said Thursday the plan to offer in-person instruction Sept. 2 remains in place and he dismissed the notion of finances driving the decision to reopen. He also said the plan may help the city because regardless of how UW-Madison operates this fall, many students will return in August when their off-campus housing leases start.
Starting Friday, downtown Madison’s State Street will be closed to vehicular traffic on eight weekends to accommodate businesses expanding their serving areas outside as a part of the city’s Streatery Restaurant Recovery Program.
At risk is University of Wisconsin-Madison’s plan to welcome students back to campus this fall. Jeff Pothof, University of Wisconsin Health chief quality and safety officer, said if local health officials don’t try to stop the spread of the virus in Dane County, in-person instruction could be called off. “If we’re unable to get on top of this current spike and it continues to accelerate, we may be in a position where it won’t make sense to be holding in-person classes,” he said. “It becomes a risk that most of us shouldn’t be taking with our children.”
Both the city and UW-Madison have similar orders in place to ensure people are distancing properly, which will be especially important come late August when the university’s 30,000 students return to campus. “We have been and will be working to ensure people are abiding by the campus order when they are on campus property,” Marc Lovicott of UW-Madison’s Police Department, said. “We have and will issue citations for blatant and/or multiple violations.”
Last month UW officials released their “Smart Restart” plan for opening campus in the fall. It allows in-person teaching with precautions and with instruction moving completely online after Thanksgiving. But officials made clear that if COVID-19 cases spike early in the semester, that shift could happen earlier.
Instead of a traditional, two-day summer visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, incoming students are completing orientation and academic advising online in their own homes.
Some University of Wisconsin-Madison students of color want the university to remove one of its most iconic landmarks, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, because of what they see as the former president’s anti-Indigenous and anti-Black history despite Lincoln’s legacy of ending slavery in the U.S.
The statue, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has sat on top of Bascom Hill, looking down State Street toward the Capitol Dome, since 1906.
While conceding that “like those of all presidents, Lincoln’s legacy is complex and contains actions which, 150 years later, appear flawed,” Blank noted that Lincoln is considered to be “one of our greatest presidents, having issued the Emancipation Proclamation, persuaded Congress to adopt the 13th Amendment ending slavery and preserved the Union during the Civil War.”
“While we can certainly admit that President Lincoln is not perfect when examining him under today’s moral lens over 150 years later, erasing our shared history does not lead to progress,” according to a release from College Republicans.
Abraham Lincoln is the next historical figure whose statue deserves removal, some University of Wisconsin-Madison students say.
Some UW-Madison students of color want the university to remove one of its most iconic landmarks, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, because of what they see as the former president’s anti-Indigenous and anti-Black history despite Lincoln’s legacy of ending slavery in the U.S.
“As the leader of UW–Madison, I believe that Abraham Lincoln’s legacy… should be both celebrated and critiqued,” Blank said in her statement. As an example, Blank argued that while the University relied on “money from land expropriated from Native Americans,” the Lincoln-era land-grant Universities–like UW–have increased access to upward social mobility.
Jake Baggott doesn’t remember precisely where he was or on what day he first heard the term “COVID-19,” but the coronavirus has since consumed most of his waking hours.
More than 20 people attended a town hall Thursday hosted by University Housing to address the hike, which will be effective July 1 and average $50 a month per household across Eagle Heights, Harvey Street Apartments and University Houses. The three buildings house about 2,500 residents across over 1,200 units.
“I just think he did, you know, some good things … the bad things that he’s done definitely outweighs them,” McWhorter said.
Patrick Sims, deputy vice chancellor and chief diversity officer, has taken a position as the executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Sherri Ann Charleston, assistant vice provost and chief affirmative action officer, will become the chief diversity and inclusion officer at Harvard University.
As far as historical figures go, most people might consider Honest Abe worthy of a statue — but Nalah McWhorter would tell you what you probably learned about the 16th President of the United States is only part of the story.
The statue has overlooked Bascom Hill for more than a hundred years and is a staple of graduate photos, but what he symbolizes for marginalized students isn’t land-grant universities or even emancipating slaves.
Cheryl Gittens, an assistant vice provost in UW-Madison’s Division of Diversity, Equity and Educational Achievement, has been named interim leader of UW’s diversity and inclusion efforts, the university announced on Thursday.
When Fannie Lou Hamer spoke to a predominantly white audience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971, the civil rights icon spoke of the time when she was 13 and asked her mother a seemingly innocent question.
“How come we wasn’t born white?”
It was the question of a young teenager growing up in the heart of the South, when ruthless racism was the norm.
Madison has a long history of protests and clashes with police, dating to student-led demonstrations on the University of Wisconsin campus in the 1960s. About 100,000 people protested in 2011 over anger related to anti-union proposals from then-Gov. Scott Walker. Smaller protests are almost a weekly, and sometimes daily, fixture at the Capitol on a host of issues.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Meredith McGlone, a spokesperson for the university, said they are following CDC guidelines, and restroom sinks and toilets are flushed “at least weekly.” As people return to buildings, they are recommending that people let taps run for a few minutes to clear them.
Restrictions in place due to COVID-19 extended from June.
“Life will be different.” This is something you have probably heard countless times over the past few months as COVID-19 has swept through our nation. We’ve had to adjust to very different living styles in order to prevent the virus from spreading.
A report released on Twitter found the department has only had one Black staff member at any given time since 1970.
Chief Diversity Officer and Deputy Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion Patrick Sims has been named the new executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, a top-ranked creative and performing arts conservatory in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Charleston most recently served as the assistant vice provost for diversity, equity, and inclusion and chief affirmative action officer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A historian trained in U.S. history, her research interests focus on law, race, gender in the United States.
The Memorial Union Terrace at UW-Madison opened for the first time this season, at 25% of its regular capacity to accommodate for physical distancing.
“We have worked hard and successfully over these last seven years to help make UW a better place,” Sims says. “Although this work is never finished, I will miss the many talented and committed colleagues and programs that are making a difference in the lives of our community.”
Typically a bustling mainstay of the city’s summer months, the Memorial Union, eerily empty and quiet during the COVID-19 pandemic, will begin a slow reopening Monday as it prepares to welcome campus back for the fall semester.
The business owners who remain on one of Madison’s most iconic streets — stretching from the State Capitol to UW-Madison — are trying to move forward with respect and purpose.
In between strained breaths, German — a freshman from West Bend attending UW-Madison — said he had been running from building to building in an attempt to cast his ballot. “I haven’t missed an election yet,” he said.
