I have been asked to contribute as an alumna many times, and finally decided I could afford it. But this latest event of someone dressed in a costume of the most hateful nature imaginable attending a UW football game has changed my mind.
I am appalled that this could happen in our UW stadium. This is not free speech, this is a hate crime.
It makes me wonder what kind of lives they live to consider this a form of entertainment. That’s a lot of anger to carry around directed at people they don’t even know. As for the way UW-Madison handled the crisis: As an alumnus, what I want to hear is an unequivocal focus on the condemnation of racism. Let the perpetrators make the argument for free speech.
Election editorial.
There is no disputing the current location of the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball program. Once a college basketball nobody, UW is now living large, situated firmly in the sport’s high-rent district.
My heart sank twice late Monday night as I scrolled by a Facebook status linked to a story about a University of Wisconsin-Stout student dying after a violent assault. It sank first for the life of the student, and second for the repercussions this would have on Middle Eastern students. The mugshot-like photo of the victim, a Saudi student, could prompt further profiling of Muslim students on the UW-Stout campus and potentially here at UW-Madison.
This latest incident of racism at last Saturday’s UW football game is shocking yet somewhat familiar. Last year I gave my football tickets to a black friend of mine and his 10-year-old brother. As they were walking down the aisle to their seat, some jerk, who was apparently sitting with his son, shouted “Sit down n—–!” Many people in the area heard this and NO ONE DID ANYTHING!
I was horrified to read about the writing off of a football fan in Obama mask and noose at last Saturday’s football game. As an educational institution that taught both of my parents, my father an immigrant, I am ashamed at the lack of thoughtful reflection that led to the decision by UW that this was simply “free speech.”
The climate at University of Wisconsin-Madison for many African-Americans, Latinos, and individuals with mixed heritage is often one where they feel unseen, unwelcome and unsafe. Beyond looking at policies at Camp Randall, I challenge the university leadership to confront and reduce hate speech while maintaining free speech.
Social media erupted over the weekend after a pair of football fans showed up at the Wisconsin Badger football game in Halloween costumes depicting Donald Trump hanging Hillary Clinton and President Obama with a red and white rope noose.
Social media erupted over the weekend after a pair of football fans showed up at the Wisconsin Badger football game in Halloween costumes depicting Donald Trump hanging Hillary Clinton and President Obama with a red and white rope noose.
The University of Wisconsin System should be able to manage construction projects on campuses rather than allowing bureaucracy to muddle up the works.
It doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that relations are strained between the University of Wisconsin System and Republicans in the state Capitol. Gov. Scott Walker has proposed extending a tuition freeze for a fifth and sixth year in the 2017-19 biennial budget, a freeze which System administrators say jeopardizes higher education in the state. Walker and his counterparts in the GOP majority in the Legislature would likely reply by inquiring about the status of the System’s cash reserves, which stood at $648 million in the spring of 2013.
Republican lawmakers are fond of saying public institutions should be run more like businesses. But what successful business would put off needed repairs to the tune of $2 billion?
While UW-Madison is famous across the country for its annual Halloween celebration starting the weekend before Halloween, what gets most overlooked are the after-effects on the campus. When googling “who picks up trash on University of Wisconsin-Madison campus?” the results give links to the City of Madison Streets & Recycling Department. But these hardworking men and women can’t be solely counted upon to clean up after the students.
It doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that relations are strained between the University of Wisconsin System and Republicans in the state Capitol. Gov. Scott Walker has proposed extending a tuition freeze for a fifth and sixth year in the 2017-19 biennial budget, a freeze which System administrators say jeopardizes higher education in the state. Walker and his counterparts in the GOP majority in the Legislature would likely reply by inquiring about the status of the System’s cash reserves, which stood at $648 million in the spring of 2013.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is currently asking students to respond to a survey on how comfortable they feel on campus on a number of levels.
A few weeks ago, Wisconsin Badger basketball star Nigel Hayes stood outside ESPN’s pregame College Game Day football broadcast with a sign that read, “BROKE COLLEGE ATHLETE: ANYTHING HELPS.” Within minutes, Hayes was being hailed for “speaking out” against the “injustice” suffered by
Donald Trump has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership, suggested that he would recognize Putin’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, and questioned the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee.
The current—Fall 2016—issue of the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Badger Insider magazine contains a fun story by John Allen titled “Legends of the Fall Semester.”
Back when I was a freshman at UW-Madison in the fall of 1988, one of the fraternities pulled one of those stupid stunts where white people dress up in blackface. In this case, there was a “slave auction” and skits parodying the likes of Oprah Winfrey.
For the second time in seven years, violent unrest has followed the presidential election in the small country of Gabon in West Equatorial Africa
Recent legislative attempts in Madison would make it a state crime to donate fetal tissue derived from abortions or do research on tissue lines. It also proposes prosecution of researchers using this type of tissue. The dean of the UW Medical school, Robert Golden, said researchers follow ethical guidelines and federal law and hope to someday eliminate the use of fetal tissue.
Fetal cell lines were critical in the development of the polio vaccine and other types of fetal tissue research have saved countless children from the devastation of infectious diseases. But now, many of these types of vaccines could be at risk if the bill just proposed in the Wisconsin Legislature becomes law.
Noted: Canon is a professor of political science and chair of the Department of Political Science at UW–Madison. Susan Yackee is a professor of public affairs and director of the Board of Visitors of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.
Noted: Writer Ian D. Duncan is a professor of medical science at UW-Madison
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank is right: It’s time to reinvest in Wisconsin’s universities after a $250 million cut in the last state budget.
This is a letter of comment concerning the actions and abuse of authority by Sen. Steven Nass.
About a dozen years ago, Willie Jude, a longtime Milwaukee Public Schools administrator who was principal of Custer High School at the time, told me that many Custer grads who went on to higher education (and there weren’t that many) realized quickly they were way behind many other students when it came to academic preparation.
The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute has released a report that may have imagined the most painful college experience in America, and the institute is hoping to bring it to Wisconsin.
On Sunday evening, students did not receive a WiscAlert. This is disturbing, because when a violent sexual assault occurs in the heart of campus, I think it’s well within our right to know.
For the second time in seven years, a presidential election in Gabon has triggered violent unrest. Rich in oil, uranium and manganese, Gabon now faces a turbulent future. Incumbent president Ali Bongo’s narrow victory over opponent Jean Ping ignited the country’s main cities and forced a recount of the vote.
UW System President Cross op-ed: When we are young, we dream about our future and what we will become. We are excited to spread our wings and see what adventures lie ahead.
Column: Wisconsin’s future lies in a competitive, qualified workforce that is highly educated in the trades, sciences, arts, education and quality government service. All that is made possible by the technical and college system in Wisconsin.
Letter to the editor: Recently my 35-year-old niece received a call for a heart from the transplant team at UW Hospital in Madison. She was admitted two-and-half hours after the call and in surgery before 8 p.m. Her surgery was a success, and within 24 hours she was sitting in a chair in her hospital room.
Politics naturally involves debate, but perhaps never before has it seemed so divisive. Beyond the partisan divide, our society is split along racial, ethnic and class lines, divisions that have rocked communities and forced hard conversations across the country.
Where are the professors? Nothing annoys academics more than pointing out how little time they actually spend teaching students.
Gov. Scott Walker refuses to fund road repairs with the revenue sources dedicated for this purpose by law — the gas tax and license fees. This has resulted in a billion deficit in the roads budget.
There are a lot of reasons I want—no, I need—my Wisconsin Badgers to defeat the No. 4 Michigan Wolverines in football Saturday. The most obvious reason is that I graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, unequivocally regarded as the planet’s finest institution of higher learning and bratwurst (sorry, you Harvard/Stanford losers). A victory in Ann Arbor would make Wisconsin a perfect 5-0, and two weeks later, in Madison, when they crush Ohio State and its tetchy coach, Urban Meyer, the Badgers will have a clear track to a spot in college football’s daffy new playoff system.
Letter to the editor: The Madison Trust for Historic Preservation believes the contract negotiated with Amazon by the UW Board of Regents to allow a package pick-up center in the Historic Red Gym is an inappropriate use within this prized national historic landmark.
Students at UW-Madison are stuck in the epicenter of Wisconsin’s disastrous political discourse. Nowhere in the nation, it seems, is the debate over education as prevalent as it is a few blocks away at our state Capitol.
Letter to the editor: The article on the proliferation of luxury high-rises aimed at UW students was in depth, informative, and thoroughly dispiriting. Setting aside the soul-crushing banality of their architecture, these buildings symbolize perfectly the elitist agenda of UW administrators.
With UW-Madison at its epicenter, the UW System appears to be sinking deeper into the intellectual morass known as political correctness. UW-Madison has unveiled a pilot program targeting 1,000 students devoted to improving race relations, largely in response to racial incidents on campus last year. If deemed successful, this program is likely to grow and probably move to other campuses.
The mission creep of the technical college system has expanded to the point that now Nicolet College out of Rhinelander has Nicolet College students in the Southwest Tech College district out of Fennimore.
With UW-Madison at its epicenter, the UW System appears to be sinking deeper into the intellectual morass known as political correctness.
The whining and bleating factions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison haven’t lost a step judging by the kerfuffle they’re stirring up over the renting of some space at the old Red Gym.
The United States has one big advantage where it still towers over the rest: its world-beating universities. The days of U.S. supremacy in manufacturing are gone, although we still are competitive in certain areas connected to our research universities. Yet when the world is “free to choose,” to paraphrase the late iconic conservative University of Chicago economist, they “choose” the U.S. for education and research.
Letter to the editor: I am an out-of-state student studying conservation biology at UW, and I have seen firsthand the pride Wisconsinites have in this great state, especially on campus and in Madison.
As Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature consider the request for $42.5 million in new state funds for the University of Wisconsin System in the 2017-19 biennial budget, they should not only accept this proposal but also embrace the teaching and learning functions of Wisconsin’s colleges and universities as the centerpiece of the state’s workforce development strategy.
What we all want after college, to get a job, just became a little easier for members of the University of Wisconsin System.
Letter to the editor: Gov. Scott Walker has recently promised to link UW funding to what he vaguely calls “performance metrics.” The recent leak of documents to the Guardian newspaper clarify what “performance metrics” means.
A hypothesis: Go to any two-bit campaign rally in Louisiana, and before there’s any politicking, I bet you’ll hear this: How ‘bout ‘dem Tigers?
Satellites observe our planet’s weather from space — observations that are the backbone of weather forecasts. Without them, forecasters would not be able to monitor hurricanes, thunderstorms or blizzards. If we are to improve our weather forecasts, we must support our nation’s satellite programs. And there are two bills in Congress that intend to do just that.
There are 43,193 students enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These 43,193 students are trying to complete homework assignments on time. These 43,193 students are attempting to attend all the club kick-off meetings they signed up for at the Student Organization Fair. And these 43,193 students enrolled at UW-Madison are trying to find the perfect balance between school and their social lives.
Despite the evidence that we already have too many students in higher education, the hot new idea among the political class is to double down by pushing for “free college tuition.”
The article “Republicans voice contempt for UW ‘political correctness’ as budget process begins” consists of a long spiel of quotes wherein Rep. Robin Vos and Sen. Steve Nass are allowed to state their case repeatedly and at length. “Balance” is provided in five paragraphs at the end of the story which talk about the UW’s proposed diversity initiative, and provide no substantive response at all to the accusations voiced by Vos and Nass earlier in the piece.
On Sept. 5, Russia’s Justice Ministry declared the country’s leading independent polling organization, the Levada Analytical Center, to be a “foreign agent.” The designation applies to nongovernmental organizations that take part in “political activities” and receive foreign funding.
In order to invest effectively in rural areas, the most important step is to listen. I am a public opinion scholar, and since 2007 I have been studying political attitudes by inviting myself into conversations among groups of regulars in gas stations, diners, etc. in communities across Wisconsin.
Letter to the editor: At the Sept. 14 UW budget meeting Regina Millner vowed to protect the humanities at the University of Wisconsin, citing the necessity of fields like English and philosophy in terms of their capacity to enrich students on a human level.
When Princeton Review released their annual rankings of American colleges and universities, one ranking stuck out to me, and probably you too: the University of Wisconsin-Madison found itself in the number one slot for top party schools in the nation. Suddenly I heard Lil Yachty reverberating inside my head: “We did it, we did it, we did it.”
As Badgers both new and old flood the University of Wisconsin campus this fall, a renewed pressure greets them — the pressure to party.
