Category: Opinion

The expected gutting of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder has captured many headlines of late, and with good reason.

Last Sunday?s editorial minimized the impact of interest rates on students by suggesting the loan ?deal? approved by Congress is ?reasonable.? (Muñoz is a student at UW?Madison Law School.)

Remember the University of Wisconsin?s old fieldhouse? It was steeped in tradition. The players and the fans enjoyed the ambiance, but the university raised money to build the Kohl Center. Now basketball is played in facilities that look the same in Madison, Champaign or Louisville, except Chihuly glass makes UW?s arena unique.

On July 30, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on newly released emails between Scott Walker?s campaign staff and county aides in 2010, back when the future governor was Milwaukee County executive.

Co-author Daniel Bier of the Waisman Center: Finding workers who improve the bottom line is the goal of any successful business. However, too often workers with disabilities get overlooked. In Wisconsin, the employment rate is 70% for working-age persons without disabilities, while only 37% of people with disabilities are on the job. In other related employment measures for these workers, Wisconsin is in the bottom half of states.

Back in 1988, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was at the forefront in the national battle over political correctness. That year, the campus governing bodies passed speech codes for both students and faculty that prohibited anyone from making gestures or statements that “demean” students on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, culture and handicapped condition.

Departments within Wisconsin?s taxpayer-funded public universities and technical colleges organized a conference that brought together radical, left-leaning groups to promote labor activism and call for the end of capitalism.

Question: How do you get something done in Washington when the Congress seems bound and determined to do nothing? (Black is a adjunct professor of urban and regional planning at UW-Madison.)

Noted: This is the last stop on my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a student on a reporting trip to the developing world. The winner, Erin Luhmann of the University of Wisconsin, and I hope to shine a bit more light on the continuing slaughter in Darfur ? and on the courage and resilience of the survivors.

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.

Having an abortion is a momentous decision. And a growing number of states are expressing concern for women who are contemplating that choice.

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.

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.

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.

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.