Category: Opinion

Noted: We have seen a dramatic cultural shift since 1984. Nowhere has this been more evident than at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Back then, few researchers were entrepreneurially minded, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation WARF refused to license its patents to start-ups and most students aspired to find secure career paths in large companies. We had to seek permission from the chancellor to help organize a campus seminar on entrepreneurship, a process that took more than a year. There were no buildings in the University Research Park.

The post-World War II baby boom swept into American colleges in the 1960s, driving up total taxpayer costs and sending officials looking for financial answers.

When now-former Wisconsin Badgers football coach Gary Andersen unexpectedly caught the last train for the West Coast, one of the reasons suggested by pundits was that the UW has tougher academic standards for its players than a lot of other schools. This wasn’t denied by Andersen, who was reportedly unhappy that he couldn’t recruit a promising lineman from Sun Prairie because the kid didn’t have the grades for admission at the university.

I’m sure former Wisconsin football coach Gary Andersen longed to return to his roots in the West. but if a few little things that were important to him had been better in Madison, I can’t help but think he would have stayed longer.

Shared government is something that is essential to the functionality of this campus. It allows for faculty, staff and students to participate in significant decisions that concern the way that this institution is operated. Here at this university, Chancellor Rebecca Blank is showing a lack of shared governance.

Imagine, for a moment, that Wisconsin had a wholly uncontroversial program that allowed low-income students to use a state voucher to attend the private, religious school of their choice. And imagine this program wasnt constantly under attack by public school employees; instead, it is recognized as simply another option allowing flexibility for students and their families.

Rolling Stone magazine last week acknowledged that there were “mistakes” in an article it published describing the gang rape of a freshman named Jackie during a fraternity party in 2012 at the University of Virginia. It is not yet clear whether the discrepancies between Jackie’s account and reporting by The Washington Post, among other news outlets, mean that the story was only superficially inaccurate or substantially false.

Noted: If you’ve watched many of the talking heads on cable television try to discuss the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, you know what we’re talking about. Unfortunately, sometimes comments on newspaper stories and columns have a similar effect.In fact, it has a name: “The nasty effect. ”That’s what University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele dubbed the negative effect certain comments can have on a reader’s understanding.

Wisconsin yet again faces mounting budget deficit projections. The danger is that Gov. Scott Walker will now sell off the publics property to fill the fiscal potholes created by his tax policies. Chanting the GOP refrain of “lower tax rates good, higher tax rates bad” as if it were a magic incantation, he seemed to believe Arthur Laffers infamous cocktail napkin “Laffer Curve” depicting lower tax rates delivering higher tax revenues.

Stanley Kutler has written “Nixon’s the One” with Harry Shearer, now on YouTube, and the play, “I, Nixon.” He has written widely on Vietnam and is a UW-Madison professor emeritus.

Noted: I am all for research, but the column I read in the Journal Sentinel about two researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison being awarded a grant of $1.6 million in the first year and a recommended total of $7.7 million over five years to study the brain action of sleeping fruit flies and mice really irritated me “Are sleep studies a wake-up call?”

I was saddened by Bill Lueders’ article about UW-Madison’s ethically questionable experimentation on the baby monkeys “On the death of my monkey,” Nov. 13.

I’d like to introduce Norm Doll, a consulting engineer and adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Doll also sits on the Heifer International Board of Directors as Chair of the Heifer Foundation, the global partner whose mission is to grow and oversee an endowment to support the work of Heifer International. Norm is going to tell you a little bit about toilets. His post originally appeared on the Heifer Blog.

I am a UW-Madison student studying elementary education. To earn my degree and follow my dream, I borrowed $17,000 and I will be paying back $46,000 with interest over the next 20 years. To me, it’s worth it. I

Quoted: “We are only going to move forward if we can work together. And we are already collaborating on a number of fronts,” UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank told a conference crowd. “If you are going to have a state and a region filled with entrepreneurs and innovators, you have to have a university close by. Universities are also idea factories.”

After living in this new town with new people for only about two months’ time, much of the student body here on the University of Wisconsin campus has begun to feel the pressures of finding a place to live next year. They’re being bombarded with flyers and propaganda screaming that the race is on to select a home for the coming academic year.

When you listen to dozens of political candidates during the last weeks of the campaign, you hear themes. When your mind wanders, you even hear entire songs.

I recently read something that has changed me: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.” (Mia Sato is an Appleton resident and a University of Wisconsin-Madison student.)

As the election returns came in last week and we learned the Republicans strengthened their hold on state government, I began to wonder what new catastrophes the legislators could dream up.

A report by the labor union-backed Center on Wisconsin Strategy COWS, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests that the state is awash in low-paying jobs.

Noted: He also should keep a watchful eye on the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the statewide economic development agency that faltered badly on his watch during his first term; push for a larger state venture capital fund $25 million is paltry; advocate for better alignment between the jobs that exist and the training workers need; push the University of Wisconsin System to be more focused on entrepreneurs; and commit to developing a true alternative campus to UW-Madison in Milwaukee, the industrial center of the state.

To the editor: It angers me that there has been no real discussion of the damage Gov. Scott Walker has done to the University of Wisconsin System, and how he has made it harder for Wisconsin students to get a college degree that will help get them decent paying jobs.

7, 2, 0, 12, 4, 0, 7, 1, 17, 3,345. These are, as we write, the number of comments on 10 recent posts at the Monkey Cage. Which contribution hit Internet pay dirt? Jesse Richman and David Earnest’s “Could non-citizens decide the November election?”

Noted: She would work with the University of Wisconsin System to build on UW-Madison?s Discovery to Product initiative with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. She would take steps to boost the number of college degree holders ? including providing more state money to universities and creating a way for students to refinance their college loans and raising the college tax deduction.

Letter from Dr. Ruth A. Decker, an alumna of UW?s Medical School.

Noted: Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism www.wisconsinwatch.org, which produces the project in partnership with MapLight. The center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Dissatisfied with their jobs and daydreaming of new careers in other intriguing fields, workers sometimes face a double-barreled anxiety: Fear of the unknown and uncertainty about where to start.

Noted: Robert E. Drechsel is the James E. Burgess chair and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Steven G. Salaita says the University of Illinois destroyed his career. The Palestinian-American professor was invited to teach in the university?s American Indian studies program earlier this year, but the board of trustees voted to block his appointment to the tenure-track position following ?a campaign by pro-Israel students, faculty members and donors who contended that his Twitter comments on the bombardment of Gaza this summer were anti-Semitic,? according to The New York Times?s Robert Mackey. (You can read a selection of the offending tweets in Mr. Mackey?s story.)

Noted: At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, for example, 72% of 2012 graduates have outstanding student loans, with the average debt about $32,000. It?s only slightly better with 2012 UW-Madison graduates, with 49% still paying off student loans, owing an average of $24,700.

As if we didn?t already have enough evidence of the ill affects of the heavy burden of student loan debt, there was new evidence last week that the damage isn?t just confined to students themselves.