Category: Opinion

The administration of the University of Wisconsin has made a welcome decision. It will run the University of Wisconsin. The students will not run it.

Earlier this month, the UW System Board of Regents approved a new policy to protect academic freedom and freedom of expression on campus. The policy requires suspension for a student who is twice found responsible and expulsion for a student who is thrice found responsible for disrupting freedom of expression.

Controversy arose last semester when conservative speaker Ben Shapiro came to campus. Many students were not welcoming toward Shapiro’s lecture series, “Dismantling Safe Spaces: Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings.” Students and staff planned a protest, but the event continued as planned, was well-attended and went on without disruption.

I found the cartoon of Bucky Badger on the front page of Saturday’s paper to be horrifying, not funny. It depicted UW-Madison’s mascot in his Bucky Wagon driving over a Maryland terrapin.

Elaine worked … as a librarian for the U.W. Center System Library and the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory.

Send the nerdy “well red” Bucky statue to one of the sub-basements in the Memorial Library, and replace it with a totem we members of the Badgers clan can worship with pride.

MSA clearly demonstrates commitment to focusing on core programs, expanding campus presence.

Recently, the University of Wisconsin System regents met and passed some astoundingly awful resolutions. First, they radically changed the process by which campus chancellors and other top-level positions are selected.

Falling enrollments at the 13 UW Colleges and mission confusion at UW Extension propelled UW President Ray Cross to embark on a reorganization of those two cornerstones of the UW System (UWS).

Noted: Advanced preparation and swift, accurate responses are essential. But the best way to prevent these attacks is through proactive public campaigns that illustrate the value of the research the institution conducts. The University of Wisconsin Madison is a leading example of institutional openness on animal research and preparedness to respond to animal-rights extremists. Eric Sandgren, former director of its Research Animals Resources Center, has established the Common Ground on Animal Research Initiative within the university and the surrounding community. The program’s goals are “creating more comprehensive, accurate and open communication about animal research” and improving research animal well-being. The initiative aims to provide communication models that accurately represent the challenges and benefits of animal research.

Kurt Bauer, the head of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, recently proposed replacing the slogan “America’s Dairyland” on state license plates with something more appropriate. That’s an idea right up there with the governor’s attempt to remove “The Wisconsin Idea” from the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin System.

Whenever I see Ku Klux Klan rallies or skinheads marching, instead of hate, I am always filled with a sense of curiosity. What do white supremacists do when they’re not white-supremacy-ing? There’s only so much time one can fill denying holocausts and soaking crosses in kerosene for nighttime activities.

This month, during a meeting at the University of Wisconsin Stout in Menomonie, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents adopted a systemwide policy that punishes student activists exercising their constitutionally protected right to protest. Specifically, the board adopted language that states students will be suspended if found to have twice engaged in violence or other disorderly conduct — neither of which have been clearly defined — that disrupts the free speech of other people. Students will be expelled if found to have done so three times.

I only remember a little of what I learned during my first days as a University of Wisconsin-Madison freshman in the late 1990s. The vegetarian chili sold in the student union’s bar tasted of beans and sawdust. The most important unwritten rule required freshmen to take blurry Polaroid pictures of ourselves seated atop the lap of the Abraham Lincoln statue at 2 a.m. And if we wanted to protest anything, we could.

After reading Chris Rickert’s recent column, “50 years later, UW activists look inward,” I wondered what he would be saying about the Dow Chemical protests if they had happened yesterday. Would he be cheering or sniggering from the sidelines that kids today just don’t get it? We’ll leave that for the alternate historians, but Rickert is dead wrong about student protest.

We don’t agree with Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions on much, but he was right when he warned last month that on college campuses “protesters are now routinely shutting down speeches and debates across the country in an effort to silence voices that insufficiently conform with their views.” And he was right to call for a “national recommitment to free speech on campus.”

UW-Rock County turned 50 years old this year, though news of a proposed merger with UW-Whitewater dampened the celebration Wednesday.

Dane County has recently been criticized for funding a study with UW-Madison that looked at the specific effects of the new photo ID law on voting patterns in Dane and Milwaukee counties. Apparently, some believe it is inappropriate to study this issue at the local level.

If you’ve thought about expending brain power to untangle the case of the UW-Madison grad student who may or may not be a racist and the UW-Madison grad student who exposed him, beware that it’s quite the rabbit hole.

After the Sterling Hall bombing, the war protests on the UW campus came to halt.

While the Wisconsin Alumni Association built the park, it’s those who visit who make the park come alive.

The Cap Times recently carried a well-written feature about student loan debt’s deleterious hold on the lives of not-so-recent college graduates.

As a new student at UW-Milwaukee, I know college is an exciting time. I graduated as valedictorian from Delavan-Darien High School in May looking forward to this fall.

Restrictive gun laws not proven to decrease gun violence, disproving liberal cries for stricter regulations

UW-Stevens Point has a 123-year history of change. Evolution has been a constant since we opened our doors in 1894 as a State Normal School.

MADISON, Wis. — About as many Democrats live in Wisconsin as Republicans do. But you wouldn’t know it from the Wisconsin State Assembly, where Republicans hold 65 percent of the seats, a bigger majority than Republican legislators enjoy in conservative states like Texas and Kentucky.

MADISON, Wis. — About as many Democrats live in Wisconsin as Republicans do. But you wouldn’t know it from the Wisconsin State Assembly, where Republicans hold 65 percent of the seats, a bigger majority than Republican legislators enjoy in conservative states like Texas and Kentucky.

The work of Dr. Budge has made a significant impact on the field of transgender psychology. Her work is often lauded as being cutting edge and addressing the day-to-day challenges faced by gender diverse people.

As a longtime professor of Wisconsin constitutional law and government, I have been lamenting that Wisconsin’s constitution and institutions have been largely absent from the Wisconsin redistricting case just argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. Simply put, the case should have gone through the state court system using state constitutional arguments.

arlier this week, professors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison made national news, including a story in the New York Times, with the claim that that nearly 17,000 potential Wisconsin voters had been “deterred” by the state’s voter-ID law. All the usual suspects responded on cue, repeating all the expected talking points, with the clerk of Milwaukee County suggesting that the survey shows that “Jim Crow laws are alive and well.”

Are the Nobel prizes sexist? If they are, then perhaps some are more sexist than others. The prize for literature has been awarded to 14 women and 95 men. The peace prize has gone to 16 women and 81 men. Of the others, female laureates number 12 in medicine/physiology, four in chemistry, two in physics, and just one in economics.

Taken as a whole, just 5 per cent of the 911 winners have been female, and in our opinion pages this week, Janet Shibley Hyde, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Women at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, considers why this might be.

Column: How is it that it remains virtually unimaginable that the governor of this state, a governor confirmed three times by Wisconsin voters, cannot appear at the state’s flagship institution to address the most consequential legislation in the state’s history without a potential riot?

Imagine, for a moment, that climate change was not synonymous with doomsday scenarios, but rather presented an opportunity to radically transform society for the better. This is not an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the risks facing our climate. Rather, it is about reframing the choice we face, away from the prospect of bleak minimalism often associated with a low-carbon future.