Category: Opinion

Letter to the editor from former member of the UW Board of Regents and speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly.

I recently announced a proposal to join the UW Colleges with our four-year comprehensive and research institutions, as well as move University of Wisconsin-Extension divisions to UW-Madison and UW System administration. The Board of Regents will consider the proposal this week and will vote on whether we can proceed with planning.

As many are undoubtedly aware, it is annual campaign time for some of our most important nonprofits, especially umbrella organizations such as United Way and Community Shares. That includes the State, University and UW Health Employees Combined Campaign of Dane County to whom we give a special shoutout today.

Alarm over the state of free speech and academic freedom on American campuses is nothing new under the collegiate sun. But it has reached fever pitch in the past few years.

President Trump may have lost the popular vote last November, but his campaign was clearly onto something powerful. The Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently commissioned a national survey to find out what it was.

The gales of November sweep across the University of Wisconsin-Superior campus with especial brutality this year. But Lake Superior isn’t the culprit. The school administration is.

MADISON, Wis. – A 70 percent approval rating is usually pretty good. That’s roughly the percentage of students on the UW-Madison campus who say they feel welcome and respected — and thus safe — on campus.

This bill sets a dangerous national precedent for all public universities.

Even though the Wisconsin unemployment rate is very low, its economic growth rate is stuck in low gear. How to improve on that long-term pattern?

I am writing regarding the re-organization of the UW Colleges that is under consideration by the UW System Administration and scheduled to be acted upon by the UW Board of Regents at its November meeting.

While much remains unknown, we do know this: Our top priority throughout the transition will be what is best for our students. Regardless of campus location, we will prepare our students to be successful in the careers that await them. We will educate them to succeed professionally and personally, to be leaders in the workplace and their community.

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.