Category: Opinion

Shouldn’t students’ chances for success at UW-Madison be the same, regardless of their families’ educational background?

From the moment I arrived in Wisconsin last year, I loved the familiar energy, intellect, and passion for doing things well.  I was happy to return to my Midwestern roots.

More than 145,000 graduate students are attending college for free, according to an estimate by the American Council on Education, which represents 1,800 college and university presidents across the country. For these students, who are often living on minimum-wage stipends, working long hours, studying and attending classes, repealing the tuition tax break could have dire financial consequences.

Eliminating a significant number of programs at the University of Wisconsin-Superior is counterproductive. It affects not only the first generation students, but also the entire student body, families, UWS and its community, faculty and staff, and the city of Superior.

As a member of UW-Madison’s faculty, I was deeply troubled by the recent article on sexual harassment at the university. The way in which UW handled alleged sexual harassment in the urban studies and planning department is a double failure for women on this campus.

Peterson, professor of psychology and popular public figure came to campus to foster stimulation, not divide the student body.

President Trump’s improbable campaign focused on the singular importance of trust — trust in Donald Trump against all comers. His campaign was built on the foundation that he alone was the person voters could believe in to make American great again.

Based on recent campus climate survey results, the problem should not be lack of conservative voices, but lack of support for marginalized voices.

For the past two years, we have been fighting to establish a Hmong American Studies Certificate Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The 2016 Campus Climate Survey found that only 35 percent of trans students felt welcome on campus. Trans students are also more likely to be the target of hate or bias incidences. We need to do better.

IAT tests unreliable, produce random answers about test-takers.

After 60 years of hard work and dedication, UW-Milwaukee has been recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as one of America’s top-tier research universities. This “R-1” ranking goes to only 2% of all U.S. universities and is awarded for excellence in faculty research and graduate programs and the accomplishments of its alumni. Milwaukee and Wisconsin have been honored in national publications for building and supporting such an outstanding academic institution.

MADISON, Wis. – Madison has long been home to one of the world’s preeminent experts and thinkers on criminology including –- of particular relevance today — Problem Oriented Policing.

Dear Editor: Kudos to the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members for unanimously passing a resolution to become carbon neutral by 2050 or sooner!

This week, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved a sweeping reorganization of public regional higher education in Wisconsin.

After nine months of confusion, chaos, and cascading tweets, Donald Trump’s White House has finally made one thing crystal clear: the U.S. is staying in Afghanistan to fight and ? so they insist ? win. “The killers need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond the reach of American might,” said the president in August, trumpeting his virtual declaration of war on the Taliban. Overturning Barack Obama’s planned (and stalled) drawdown in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced that the Pentagon would send 4,000 more soldiers to fight there, bringing American troop strength to nearly 15,000.

It’s hard to make the case for lowering Wisconsin’s drinking age the same week as University of Wisconsin researchers release a study with new evidence of the causal effect of alcohol on a range of cancers.

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.”