The University of Wisconsin-Madison has requested that the state Legislature grant it an exemption to Wisconsin?s long-standing open records law. The proposed legislation, if passed, would directly limit public access to university records and sources of information and diminish independent scrutiny at a time of increasing privatization and corporate influence over the state?s flagship university.
Our editorial agenda for the year consists of individual issues we named Our Climate, Our Schools, Our Government and Our Region, to emphasize the importance of some semblance of shared goals. It seems to us we can disagree on a lot of things but still have some sense of a common good. We?re having a hard time finding that in the proposed state budget currently being discussed by the state legislature?s Joint Finance Committee.
Why is it that the only thing state Republicans and Democrats can agree on is a bad idea?
Is it to naive to think that we as human beings can change the world and make it a better place to live? Have we as modern people lost hope and given up faith in the ability to change?
These days, you can?t go online or watch the news without hearing about a new product that removes touch from the user experience. The recently released Samsung Galaxy S4 is generating buzz with touchless features including text scrolling that responds to users? eye movements and video that automatically pauses if you look away from the screen while watching. Google Glass ? the most talked-about device of the year?removes touch from the smartphone experience entirely, using eye movements and voice commands to make calls, send email and surf the web.
Having an abortion is a momentous decision. And a growing number of states are expressing concern for women who are contemplating that choice.
Your business has been hemorrhaging customers for years, so how do you stop the bleeding and begin healing?
May 2013 will probably not go down as Mark Jeffries? favorite month as CEO of youth fashion retailer Abercrombie & Fitch. Since he is not running for political office, Jeffries likely didn?t expect he was about to confront a PR firestorm over an interview he gave several years ago. (The story is by Rob Tanner, assistant professor of marketing for the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)
For over 18 long months the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile have been under siege by the Government of Sudan. This government carries out daily bombing sorties against the people of the area and continues to deny humanitarian organizations from providing desperately needed food and medical supplies.
On Monday, as a dozen protesters staged a sit-in at Interim Chancellor David Ward?s office, the dispute over labor violations by Palermo?s Pizza was thrust into the campus spotlight.
After four years at the University of Wisconsin and 18 years before that as a child of two American parents, I?ve heard the word ?privilege? with a steady degree of regularity. Its use starts as a warning like, ?Having your toy is a privilege, not a right,? and in an academic setting evolves something much more indicting; for example: ?You are the embodiment of white privilege.? The mere use of the word makes most people chafe and immediately begin to defend themselves from a perceived assault on their character or their own group identity.
As the outrage about the cancellation of the Mifflin Street Block Party escalates, there may be some value in considering where Mifflin began and where it is now.
In 1860, Wisconsin legislators were already beginning to question whether they were getting enough out of their investment in the University of Wisconsin. State government had spent over $100,000 to build the university, and critics believed the UW “was not rendering that large and practical service to education which the state expected.” In 1864, when all but one of the senior class joined the Army to fight in the Civil War – no commencement was held – it appeared the university might be headed for extinction.
Last year around this time, The Daily Cardinal Editorial Board penned ?UW needs to pay commencement speakers.? The column was primarily in response to the announcement University of Wisconsin -Madison Alumnus Carol Bartz was to be the spring 2012 commencement speaker. The editorial board was not optimistic that the former Yahoo and Autodesk?s CEO would deliver a rousing address. Somewhat paradoxically, this year?s announced commencement speaker, Anders Holm, did not have his credentials so stringently examined by this board.
Trying to wake up, I peacefully sip coffee as I read the April 6 La Crosse Tribune. On page B6, I read that the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents confirmed Rebecca Blank as the next chancellor of UW-Madison. She will be paid $495,000 a year.
Superstorm Sandy did more than rock the eastern coast of the United States last year. It also damaged Mitt Romney?s chances in the presidential election. Quotes from Republican primaries, where Romney called for responsibility for disaster response to shift from the federal government to state and local authorities, suddenly looked foolish as those local authorities were quickly overwhelmed. Yet, even as the aftermath of Sandy demonstrates the need for federal help, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in New York is losing US$1.3 billion ? roughly 5% of its budget ? in government cutbacks.
For hundreds of years, the experience of higher education has essentially been the same: Students have gathered at places of higher learning, been instructed by faculty and received their degrees after completing a designated course of study.
Allow us, for a moment, to indulge our journalistic predisposition for cliché: The University of Wisconsin finds itself at a crossroads.
For 16 years, I had the honor of representing western Wisconsin in Congress. But in so many ways, that experience was a prelude to current times.
We have discovered over the years that major college football coaches aren?t always the most warm and fuzzy, honest and ethical people.
Chances are that French air power combined with superior numbers and equipment on the ground in Mali will prevail and force the jihadis to retreat in some fashion to the Sahel. That, however, will hardly be the end.
ESPN had not yet signed off its telecast from Bloomington, Ind., when my iPhone pinged, pinged again, then again. Bo Ryan?s Badgers had just stunned the national college basketball world by closing out the heavily favored Indiana Hoosiers, a team ranked second in the nation, before 17,472 raucous fans at Assembly Hall.
Barry Alvarez wants you to think the wound is healed all while peeling back a blood-stained bandage.
I was disappointed to read that female students at two University of Wisconsin campuses are exploring the “Sugar Daddy” lifestyle in record numbers. Sugar daddies are older men that “Take care” of younger women financially in exchange for sex or companionship. The co-eds then use the cash to pay for tuition or college expenses.
What?s your salary? How much do you make? For most Americans, it?s impolite to ask. Many would tell you it?s nobody?s business but their own ? a number known only to the individual, his or her employer, tax and loan professionals, and maybe a few others.
All too many people have a tendency to roll their eyes whenever University of Wisconsin-Madison students and faculty members raise questions about the exclusive contracts apparel manufacturers like Adidas have with the university.
An essay by Torben Lütjen, a German political scientist and visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is researching a book on the reasons behind political polarization.
Assembly Speaker-elect Robin Vos recently warned the University of Wisconsin-Madison budget might be affected after some classes on Bascom Hill were cancelled the day of President Obama?s pre-election rally on campus.
Noted: Since 2005, I have served as a dean and provost at two regional campuses in the University of Wisconsin System, a time of extraordinary change, disruption, even upheaval, where political leadership has been a significant driver of change, not just in how we fund public colleges and universities but in how we deliver college degrees. These have been tumultuous years for higher education in the state of Wisconsin, with 2011 our annus horribilis, beginning with UW Madison?s move for independence and ending with the UW system intact but redesigned to allow more independence for, and increased competition among, campuses within the system.
During these austere times in the UW System, with diminishing state resources and grants and scholarships, it is judicious to question the fellowships and rewards received by athletes in high-profile sports such as football. The football program is currently flush with money and resources (it has not always been), due largely to Pat Richter and Barry Alvarez turning the program around. The lucrative funds from donors are retained within the athletic program and do not help support academic programs.
Twenty-four UW-Madison engineering seniors and graduate students who had enrolled in a mechanical engineering course in fluid power recently received an email that read, in part: “Unfortunately, due to budget reductions, the mechanical engineering department will not be able to hire an instructor for ME 545 for spring 2013.”
Barry Alvarez will get an extra $118,500 for one month?s work. That?s on top of his annual salary of $1 million.
The Institute for One Wisconsin is out to shame us into doing something to fix the nation?s student debt problem. And that it?s a problem is unmistakable. We?re drowning young college graduates in years and years of unconscionable loan payments, and there?s growing evidence that it?s having a profoundly negative impact on the nation?s economy. The institute, which is the research arm of the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, has embarked on a statewide campaign to show the people of Wisconsin just how serious and onerous student debt has become.
I wrote a column posted online that pretty much deifies Barry Alvarez for a terrific, feel-good week of leadership in the wake of Bret Bielema?s departure as Badger football coach. That was before I saw that he is taking $225,000 in added pay for a month?s work.
Barry Alvarez bringing back Barry Alvarez to coach the University of Wisconsin football team in the Rose Bowl was a slam dunk. It will make everyone ? UW players and fans, Rose Bowl directors and ESPN executives ? extremely happy. But of all the nuggets from Alvarez?s first public appearance since coach Bret Bielema bolted unexpectedly for Arkansas, the most important was this: Although he is relishing this moment, Alvarez will coach only one game before he resumes his duties as UW?s athletic director full-time. And while Big Game Barry?s decision to coach made the Rose Bowl infinitely more interesting, his ability to find a replacement who can perpetuate or even improve upon what Bielema did will have a far greater impact on the program.
Sports reporters and columnists who regularly interact with Wisconsin?s football program will have lots to say about Bret Bielema?s startling departure for the coaching job at Arkansas. I lack an insider?s perspective into the offices at 1440 Monroe St., but as a 30-year season ticket holder, I probably have company in the view that Bielema should be thanked for his performance, yet consider news of his exit to be welcome.
Bret Bielema always had the look of an upwardly mobile coach, a go-getter who would never stay in one place for long. Still, it was a stunner when Bielema left the University of Wisconsin football program to take the coaching job at Arkansas, if only because it looks like a lateral move at best. The Bielema-to-Arkansas bombshell exploded Tuesday, just three days after his Badgers won the Big Ten Conference title and a trip to the Rose Bowl for the third consecutive year. Despite that run of success, Bielema was a polarizing figure in Wisconsin, where his approval rating never matched his win total.
There were no flood warnings issued Tuesday because of an excess of tears. The news that Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema was leaving for Arkansas came from left of left field, but once the surprise subsided, there were more folks running toward the Don?t Let The Door Hit You In The Backside On Your Way Out bandwagon than any other.
I have been to hell. I have faced down the forces of evil. I have descended into the darkest reaches of existence and I have seen the blackness which resides in the hidden corners of men?s souls. What I mean to say is that I?ve gone to the comments section on an online article related to religion. I will never find a more wretched hive of belligerence and stupidity. Or at least I hope I won?t. Honestly, I don?t really want to talk about it, but I will.
A couple of years back, when I was in high school, I took part in this debate on the topic ?studying abroad is a mere fad?. I spoke against it. I spoke on how it?s not a fad. I won the debate because I truly believed in the points I had put forward. But now that I am here in the United States of America, studying at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, I am all the more convinced that studying abroad is not a fad at all! The opportunity given to me by my university to experience the U.S. education system at one of the premiere institutes in the U.S.A, is one I will always be grateful to them for.
Wisconsin?s first recreational hunt for wolves is nearing an end and as the hunt itself winds down, attention will turn to analysis and to what is, hopefully, a scientific assessment of the season and its impact on the state?s wolf population. Much of that work will focus, appropriately, on population densities in the wake of the hunt and implications for future quotas….Not long after the hunt started, UW-Madison researcher Adrian Treves released a study that confirmed what most suspected ? public attitudes toward the wolf deteriorated in the months and years prior to approval of the hunting season.
Madison is home to tons of history and sentimental hotspots. We have the big ones such as the Capitol, Memorial Union, Bascom Hill and many others. However, it?s the smaller, more unnoticed areas that are under attack. Real estate developers have made plans to destroy the Stadium Bar on Monroe Street and put a six-story apartment complex in its place. The Minneapolis-based OPUS Group plans to create a complex with retail space on the first floor and five floors of apartments. This brings the entire building to a total of 100 units and 150 bedrooms with 40 underground parking spaces.While it is extremely important that every student finds a place to live while attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this continual construction of more and more apartment complexes is getting out of control.
In 1962, Richard Nixon conceded defeat in his race for California governor, bitterly telling reporters that the press “wouldn?t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” In the decades since, the belief that the media is a covert ? and in some cases overt ? advocate of liberal ideology has become deeply ingrained in the conservative consciousness. Right-wing bloggers and talk radio personalities regularly depict mainstream reporters as members of an elite leftist clique, dogged in their determination to bring down Republicans and unwilling to challenge Democrats.
James Baughman, a UW-Madison professor of journalism, says he often struggles to convince conservatives that traditional media reporters are not bent on promoting a political viewpoint.”A lot of them really refuse to believe that reporters can be objective,” he says.
I am not a Black Friday kind of person. Nor do I see myself partaking of any of the increasingly popular shopping opportunities on Thanksgiving Day ? which I am christening Bloated Thursday, as much as for the swelling of the lines at the mall as for the gas and indigestion I imagine one experiences during a sale-crazed shopping spree immediately following a meal big enough to feed a small African village.
“For families with healthy emotional connections and constructive, mature communication, any opportunity to engage in a joint activity such as shopping will generally be experienced as pleasurable, even when stressful,” said Darald Hanusa, a senior lecturer in social work at UW-Madison. But he emphasized it’s not the shopping that makes for happy families; it’s the happy families that make for pleasant shopping.
In October this year, I was invited to give a lecture to school leaders and senior staff from state schools in the Melbourne area. However, I was ?dis-invited? by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, after some members heard another lecture I gave at the University of Melbourne on why we should be worried about the effects of current school reforms and what we might do about them. For at least some people in the DEECD, my statements were ?too controversial? in the current political context of school reform.
I want to take some time today and move away from the routine talk-about-something-that-happened-over-the-weekend column and discuss an issue on campus I believe is very important. This issue has the potential to affect everyone on campus, but for the most part has largely stayed out of discussing among students and faculty.
UW is now invested in climate change. Our professors? well-deserved pensions are paid partially from the revenues of the fossil fuel industry. Accordingly, any positive activism we do surrounding climate change, sustainability or environmentalism must be accompanied by a crucial push for divestment or else we?re simply betting against ourselves. We just opened an Office of Sustainability. We have a wide variety of departments, classes and programs which highlight the dangers and moral hazards of climate change. As an institution, we must put our money where our mouth is.
….Of course, we?ll continue to fight the most egregious projects, from the Keystone XL pipeline to drilling in the Arctic, and we?ll continue to hope that the administration will take more than half-hearted moves to keep carbon in the ground. But we?re not counting on our politicians anymore. After 20 years of general inaction on climate change, while the world?s emissions and the planet?s temperature have continued to soar, it?s time to engage the real power: a reckless fossil fuel industry that has known for years the damage they?re doing. Until they cease exploring for new hydrocarbons and begin the rapid conversion to energy companies installing renewable energy on a vast scale, they don?t deserve the social license our silence grants them.
Tensions between unions, business owners and the government started long before Wisconsin?s recall election or the more recent demise of the Twinkie. The University Theatre?s current production, Marc Blitzstein?s ?The Cradle Will Rock,? directed by Norma Saldivar, highlights these tensions in both the drama onstage and the history of the musical itself.
Last month Dario Maestripieri, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Chicago, lamented on Facebook that there was a lack of ?attractive women? at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. I wasn?t there, but I would probably pass Maestripieri?s ?super model type? test, at least to the extent that any woman looks like that in the real world. He has been thoroughly eviscerated by now, but his remarks are an opportunity to reflect on how attractive women are treated in the academy.
Scientists and journalists share an overriding ethical obligation to treat the information they gather responsibly: to describe both positive and negative data in proper context so that the “consumers” of that information – whether it be other scientists or newspaper readers – receive a fair presentation of the facts, in a way that allows them to draw their own conclusions. (A guest commentary by UW-Madison physician Thomas Zdeblick.)
The promise of stem cell research has been protected by President Obama, but the election of Mitt Romney would send Wisconsin?s signature biotechnology field back into chaos, costing the state its national reputation as a good home forward-looking, job-creating business, to say nothing of dashing the hopes of thousands of patients waiting for new therapies to treat incurable diseases such as Parkinson?s, Alzheimers and diabetes.
In 2005 Elizabeth Goodwin, PhD, a geneticist and professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, admitted to manipulating data on a research grant application in order to convince reviewers that her lab was worthy of the money it was requesting. She was turned in by graduate students working at her lab. Just this last week, Dr. Thomas Zdeblick, a surgeon at UW-Madison, was found to have received $34 million from a company called Medtronic because he allowed employees at that company to ghost-write papers with his name on them, which advocated the use of a controversial and ineffective spinal treatment the company was promoting. These papers failed to disclose that the spinal treatment being advocated for had been shown to cause sterility in men. These two cases exemplify a problem in modern scientific research funding: The incentive to cheat is incredibly high.
This week holds a special significance for most of the students at the UW-Madison. I am no exception. For many of us, Tuesday will be the first time we can vote in a presidential election. I?m sure everybody?s parents have already reminded them to vote (and probably passed some advice on who to endorse as well). But whether you?re planning on rocking the vote or flat out stoning it, I think it?s helpful to remember exactly what voting means in the U.S. of A.
Quoted: Stephen Ward, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Most studies have focused on the factors that shape enrollment decisions, or on the overall impact of specific programs. But few have attended to how the presence or absence of aid actually affects students? decisions about their education. As the researchers Sara Goldrick-Rab, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Douglas N. Harris, of Tulane University, recently argued in a paper on improving education research, we simply do not know enough about which kinds of financial-aid programs work best, for which students, and in what ways.
I know it?s common for major corporations and major universities to hire outside search firms to help them find top leaders. But corporations aren?t spending millions in tax dollars. And am I wrong to wonder why a tax-supported organization such as UW-Madison ? which has its own human resources department and thousands of learned people of sound judgment ? can?t find its own boss? UW-Madison history professor and search committee chairman David McDonald emphasized that “this is a really important position,” and the search firm, Storbeck/Pimentel and Associates, has expertise and connections “that none of us on the committee really has.”He also said hiring search firms to identify chancellor candidates is standard practice in the UW System.
For as long as I can remember, my two friends who attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have been telling me that there is nothing comparable to spending a Badger football weekend at their alma mater. The weekend of October 27th also happened to be the Madison Homecoming as well as an event celebrating Halloween known as Freakfest, so I was offered multiple opportunities to be 18 again.
Climate change has registered barely a peep in the presidential contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. But no matter who wins on Nov. 6, the next occupant of the Oval Office is likely to become the first “climate president.” [A column by Paul Robbins, director of the Nelson Institute.]
George McGovern lived his public life with an integrity that, in these rancid political times, all of us might envy. He unfortunately is remembered most for his overwhelming defeat at the hands of Richard Nixon in the presidential election of 1972, but it is worth noting that Nixon resigned in disgrace, the only president to ever abandon his office. McGovern was a historian, undoubtedly with profound respect for the presidency; it is difficult to imagine his obstructing justice or abusing his power in the Nixon manner.
(Stanley Kutler, a UW-Madison professor emeritus, is the author of the “The Wars of Watergate” (Norton), and with Harry Shearer has written the forthcoming television series, “Nixon’s the One.” This column first appeared on Salon.com.)
