Last Thursday, The Daily Cardinal, Badger Herald, Wisconsin State Journal, Madison.com, UW-Madison and other news outlets broke headlines on a report detailing an unfortunate alleged racial incident against two black female students walking through frat row.
People are often surprised when I tell them I am in a fraternity. I joined Delta Upsilon my freshman year and lived in the house last year, but I am no frat star. In the past two years, I?ve been to maybe three DU events, however I am close to active and inactive members. Considering I am a non-white member of an allegedly racist fraternity, I can speak to last week?s racial incident with some clarity. There are three things that I am sure of: excessively punishing DU is a mistake, disciplining the individuals involved needs to be firm and fair and DU?s proximity to the end of Frances Street is a factor that has been ignored.
One can see why Laurel Rice does not follow politics closely, considering that what she calls her ?day job? is performing gynecological cancer surgery. Dr. Rice is chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Who better, I thought, to ask about the bill that majority Republicans in the Legislature recently passed requiring that doctors take unnecessary steps and abide by new restrictions before performing an abortion.
Unlike some of my peers, I never really listened to Springsteen before taking Craig Werner?s class at UW Madison — “Bruce Springsteen?s America.” My parents were fans of the Boss, but he and the E-Street crew took a back seat to David Bowie, U2, The Clash, and R.E.M.
MADISON?It is widely recognized that we live and work in a world that is increasingly interdependent and interconnected. Yet, the financial resources at our disposal to respond to the educational challenges of this global environment continue to shrink.
From 2009-2011, I walked rent checks over to my landlord at The Rifken Group on Madison?s Capitol square. Write the checks to Central Focus LLC, they told me and my two roommates. We didn?t realize the significance. As graduates of the University of Wisconsin in 2007, my roommates and I had a genuine affection for living in downtown Madison.
The recent publication of the fifth, and final, volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) marks the culmination of nearly five decades of work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. DARE is a landmark of American scholarship, recording the words, phrases, pronunciations, and pieces of grammar and syntax that vary from one part of the country to another. And the attendant hoopla and coverage from media and DARE admirers around the world is fitting and deserved.
All of us well-educated Madison liberals can “tsk, tsk” at the regular bashing our beloved UW-Madison takes from the likes of such “anti-intellectuals” as Republican state Rep. Steve Nass. But for being so smart, university types sometimes seem dumb enough to bring it upon themselves.
School vouchers have stalled in the Pennsylvania legislature, and President Obama’s budget proposes to end the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which allows children from low-income families to attend private schools with government aid. This is despite a U.S. Department of Education evaluation led by one of us Wolf that found the Washington program boosted the high school graduation rate by 21 percent.
Members of the university?s Faculty Senate fear that professors at UW-Madison will soon leave the university in search of better paying jobs at competing schools. This fear came shortly after a report was released showing that faculty at UW-Madison are paid significantly less than their peers at other universities. In fact, salaries here are about 11 percent lower overall than at competing institutions.
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, I spend 75 minutes listening to and talking about Bruce Springsteen with twenty 19- and 20-year-old freshmen at the University of Wisconsin. When the class (technically titled “Bruce Springsteen?s America”) began, most the students didn?t know much of Springsteen?s music beyond “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Born to Run.” The most common explanation for why they signed up for the class was something like “my parents are crazy about Bruce and I?d kinda like to know why.” They?re smart, engaged, a bit more urban and geographically diverse than the average UW class. (New York City, Long Island, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Pittsburg, and China via Queens, in addition to our standard upper Midwestern mix). I?ll introduce you to a few of them in a minute.
Mozart rocks. So when I heard that the University Opera was staging Wolfgang?s classic ?Don Giovanni,? I knew it would be a must-see.
The UW-Madison faculty is disturbed by columnist Chris Rickert cherry-picking two items from a list of 11 possible solutions to the problem of declining faculty salaries, not one of which has been endorsed by the Faculty Senate, in his March 8 column, “Professors, it shouldn?t be all about the money.”
Foster Friess, a conservative political donor, recently discounted the importance of insurance coverage for contraceptives, saying, ?Back in my days, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn?t that costly.?
As a freshman, one of the first things I was told was ?Don?t walk Rapeshore alone at night.? As unflattering as that nickname is, ?Rapeshore? doesn?t only describe Lakeshore Path anymore.
Sunday was another very good day for college basketball in the great state of Wisconsin.bMarquette is a No. 3 in the West. Wisconsin is a No. 4 in the East.
What do Bruce Springsteen, leukemia, the Funk Brothers, Afghanistan and Iraq, Chuck Berry, bone marrow transplants, and blue-eyed soul have to do with Stewart Francke and his music?
The Task Force on UW Restructuring should be using its time to refocus the state and UW on the needs of Wisconsin students and families. It should be working to open the university doors to all Wisconsinites, instead of protecting the prestige of UW. It should be focused on rebuilding the relationship between our communities and the universities in them and reprioritizing public investment in UW. [A column by Allie Gardner, ASM chair.]
This week, a Faculty Senate committee outlined its Commission on Faculty Compensation and Economic Benefits report, a report describing the growing problem that UW-Madison has and will be facing in regards to the salaries and compensation of its faculty. The report states that the salaries of instructors, specifically professors and assistant professors, are significantly lower compared to other Big Ten and public institutions.
The University of Wisconsin made headlines a couple weeks ago when it was named the fifth-best value of public colleges in America by Princeton Review. The university gave itself a pat on the back for this, as it should have. However, we also came out as the 14th best party school in America. Now, I am not opposed to a little partying and drinking, but I realize that the extent to which Badgers do it is ridiculous. I think we as a campus should slow down.
….In choosing low-paying career paths ? social services and journalism ? I aimed for a full life, if not necessarily a full-bank-account life, and I?m happy I did. So I?m puzzled by these cries coming from that expanse of state-owned land on the shores of Lake Mendota that the quality of UW-Madison is in jeopardy because its miserly professorial salaries are not enough to keep and recruit the best faculty. I had always assumed that college professors, like me, saw money-making as a fairly low priority.
It?s entirely possible that the temporary injunction against Wisconsin?s voter ID law issued Tuesday won?t stand. The decision has obvious flaws. And, no, Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan should not have signed a petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker. Nevertheless, Flanagan raised enough issues in his 11-page decision to call Wisconsin?s version of voter ID into question and to warrant this action. We think that?s good news for the state?s voters, especially the 220,000 who, according to one expert quoted by the judge, don?t have the proper ID to vote.
Earlier this week, members of Johnny Cash?s extended family gathered in his boyhood home of Dyess, Ark., to commemorate what would have been the singer?s 80th birthday. That celebration jump-starts a tsunami of Cash activity this year, including the release of new and old music and the opening of a Johnny Cash museum in Nashville. “The Man in Black” will be toasted and lionized and, hopefully, appreciated.
In order for Gov. Scott Walker to balance the state budget, the University of Wisconsin has been handed $46.1 million in cuts. As of yet, no UW group is sure how to shoulder the setback, and right now, all anyone can do is plug leaks in the levy while the flood of consequences is ready to break loose.
Can we still be arguing about a woman?s ability to control her own fertility? Almost 50 years ago in Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down state restrictions on contraception because they violated a right to privacy. (Louise G. Trubek is a public interest lawyer and an emerita professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.)
In order for Gov. Scott Walker to balance the state budget, the University of Wisconsin has been handed $46.1 million in cuts. As of yet, no UW group is sure how to shoulder the setback, and right now, all anyone can do is plug leaks in the levy while the flood of consequences is ready to break loose.
….Since the Republicans have achieved absolute power in our state, they have sought to destroy the labor movement and any political opposition to their corporate agenda. They have crippled public employee unions and have now attacked the School for Workers, the oldest university-based labor education program in the country. It was also one of the first outreach programs created by the Wisconsin Idea. The Wisconsin Idea was developed during the governorship of Robert M. La Follette. It is based on the belief that the people rather than special interests should control government institutions. In 1904 UW President Charles Van Hise declared: ?I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every home in the state.? He decreed that the boundaries of the university should be the boundaries of the state. The Wisconsin Idea gave birth to such innovations as workers? compensation, unemployment insurance and collective bargaining laws, as well as the formation of cooperatives, vocational education and apprenticeship programs for worker training.
It seems amazing that it doesn?t happen more often. We all see them, especially around campus: young people crossing the street wearing headphones, sometimes oblivious to what?s going on around them. I?ve hit the brakes more than once for bicyclists and pedestrians who have floated in front of my moving car on University Avenue, never glancing in my direction. They can?t hear you honk. All you can do is shake your head and hope that person doesn?t end up dead.
Looking through the University of Wisconsin Police Department?s daily crime log is, for the most part, pretty boring. The one-line incident descriptions show just how much of their time is spent on routine tasks such as detox conveyances and fire alarm checks.
The State Journal editorial board is right to express outrage over our continuing DUI epidemic. But when our lawmakers do react, let?s make sure their actions are effective. Clearly Wisconsin needs stronger DUI penalties, but that alone won?t help. Ample research has shown that increasing penalties doesn?t change behavior unless people think they might get caught. Toward that end, we need sobriety checkpoints.
His legacy could be defined by the issues involving John Chadima, Adidas and the WIAA….Between the looming Adidas fiasco, the John Chadima investigation and the WIAA controversy, Alvarez has some sizeable, hard-to-digest entrees on his administrative plate at the moment.
Today, the Joint Committee on Finance will hold a hearing regarding the disproportionate budget lapse to the University of Wisconsin System. It is proposed that the UW System take a $65.6 million cut, 38 percent of the total lapse. This, after the System received a $250 million cut in the current biennial budget, bringing UW funding down to 7 percent of the total state budget.
Since UW-Madison has $77 million to give Camp Randall a facelift, I assume there is no reason any longer for the university to deny a living wage to workers who serve the facility. Currently, temp workers making around $8 an hour are used to clean up after sporting events and graduation. UW should do the decent thing and use staff custodians to do the work.
If the University of Wisconsin?s Labor Licensing Policy Committee has their way, the Wisconsin Badgers football team, and the rest of the athletic department, will lose their apparel company once again.
Chris Rickert?s Thursday column, “Big donors don?t make a big impact on tuition at UW-Madison,” misses the mark by focusing on the fact that philanthropy does not lower the price of tuition. In 2011, the UW Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to raising, investing and distributing donor gift funds to support UW-Madison, transferred more than $220 million in philanthropy to enhance the quality of the people, programs and facilities at the university. It is this enhanced quality funded by a source other than tuition that makes UW-Madison a great value (i.e., quality per unit of cost).
President Obama?s plan to make college more affordable is noble in intent but misses the mark in design. If the president and Congress were to focus on the real culprit of high college costs ? poor college completion numbers ? they could find rare common ground and make substantial headway on a problem that threatens to sink U.S. economic competitiveness.
….College presidents point to what seem like reasonable arguments for rising tuition: shrinking state budgets, for one, and the increasing costs of energy, pensions and health care. But if these circular arguments simply go round and round, an important opportunity will be missed. Data show that time, not tuition, is the enemy of college completion. Today?s college students are dramatically different from the archetype of the U.S. undergraduate.
The same guy who requested Planned Parenthoods across Wisconsin be drained of state and federal Maternal and Child Health funds is now on a mission to green light civil lawsuits against underage drinkers.
By the end of this month, Chancellor David Ward might be lucky enough to receive a freshly-baked cake from his friends at the Student Labor Action Coalition.
Apple, over the past couple of weeks, has begun to unveil its strategy for getting into the textbook business. It hopes to electronically transform this industry, similar to the other sectors it has systematically revolutionized since the turn of the century. It is no secret that educators and academic institutions are looking for ways to invigorate the classroom experience and to capture the attention spans of today?s students.
State Journal reporter Deb Ziff?s Sunday article, “Paying for college: Tough lesson,” did a great job of capturing the tribulations of a student trying to finance a UW education. But people should know there is something students can do to avoid high costs and heavy debt. The UW Colleges ? the UW System?s network of 13 freshman-sophomore campuses ? offers the first two years of a UW liberal arts education at a much lower cost, $4,503 per year in tuition.
A planning team consisting of University of Wisconsin staff and consultants are in the middle of a two-year Federal Emergency Management Agency-funded grant to develop a Disaster-Resistant University plan for the Madison campus and outlying properties. The goal of this plan is to help mitigate and minimize potential damage from natural, technological or political hazards or disasters.
….It required a sense of bravery on the part of the alleged victim, a UW student employee, to speak out immediately about being sexually assaulted and verbally threatened by Chadima, a high-ranking athletic department official who has since resigned in disgrace. That the student, a 22-year-old man, insisted the incident be kept quiet until after the bowl game, lest it be a distraction to the UW football team for its Jan. 2 game vs. Oregon, strikes me as an extraordinary personal sacrifice. The same goes for his desire not to make a criminal complaint against Chadima.
By now, everyone has heard that Senior Associate Athletic Director John Chadima resigned after he allegedly sexually assaulted a student employee at a Rose Bowl party. Quickly forgetting the fact that senior athletic officials, including Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, knew of other parties, the athletic department and university handled the situation well. An investigation was completed and released in a timely fashion, and offices are considering multiple alcohol policy changes.
Barry Alvarez should be ashamed of his comments regarding the drinking party involving underage Wisconsin students just before the Rose Bowl.
Then he should be reprimanded by the university.
The additional $25.5 million UW-Madison will have to cut over the next two years is already having a major impact on campus, and one of the most tangible ways in which students will feel the cuts is the elimination of 29 for-credit physical education classes after 2012.
Neither the cops nor prosecutors out in Los Angeles know anything about some Wisconsin guy by the name of John Chadima. Never got a complaint or a request for an investigation. Three different people in the police department and the district attorney?s office out there checked for me. Nothing.
My take earlier this month on the then-unspecified allegations of misconduct against UW-Madison senior associate athletic director John Chadima was that anyone with that many words in his title can?t be high enough on the totem pole to merit much of a scandal ? especially since he wasn?t charged with a crime. Boy, was I wrong. We don’t yet know the extent of the fallout from Chadima’s alleged sexual assault of a student employee during the football team’s trip to the Rose Bowl. But I feel pretty confident a primary factor behind the incident and the university’s response to it is clear enough: hubris.
Last week, thousands gathered near the Capitol to celebrate as nearly two million signatures were delivered to the Government Accountability Board in the culmination of the effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, and three other state senators. Representing a stunning 46% of the 2010 electorate, the more than one million signatures submitted for the recall of Scott Walker announced loud and clear that Wisconsinites are ready to put their state back on track. Students at UW-Madison have been hurt badly by Walker?s policies, and they played an important part in the recall.
David Ward first came to Madison from England as a graduate student in 1960, before John Kennedy was president and before freshman Paul Soglin showed up from Chicago to embark on his adult destiny as our intermittent mayor. Today, at 73, the self-effacing interim chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison laces his vision for UW with repeated references to his advanced age. But make no mistake: Ward?s 2012 ideas to remake UW are distinctly anti-nostalgic.
If you were paying attention to the flap over two recent flu experiments involving ferrets, you may have come away with the impression that scientists all but waved a red flag in front of terrorists and said, “Here?s a perfect biological weapon ? help yourselves.”
The city of Madison and the University of Wisconsin are in a continuing partnership. UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez needs to balance the university?s interests and its need to generate revenue with the Wisconsin Idea – reaching to the boundaries of the state. The UW serves the entire state of Wisconsin and these high school basketball players work for years to be able to earn the chance to play at the Kohl Center. State high school basketball tournaments were meant to be played on the hardwood floor of the major state university basketball team. This is an instance where the city and the university partnership to serve the state must take precedence.
With the recent announcement by Badger running back Montee Ball that he has decided to remain at UW-Madison and finish out his senior year, rather than enter the NFL draft, we have nothing but respect for this outstanding young man. When Ball and others accepted scholarships to attend UW and play football, they took on serious obligations, which Ball has seen fit to honor and complete. He is indeed a role model for athletes who will attend the UW now and in the future.
There are two kinds of people in this world: Those with problems and those with solutions. This is one of those rare moments when I think I might be able to do something besides complain. The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association and University of Wisconsin Athletic Department have a dilemma on their hands.
The note came early last month, and I couldn?t have been happier. “Hi Doug,” the email began. “On the small chance that you missed it, today?s New York Times reports Awonder Liang just won the 8-year-old world chess championship. I remember your playing with him some time ago. “It was signed, “Jim.” I was happy because I was always happy to hear from Jim Crow. This in no way made me unique. James F. Crow was known around the world as a great scientist, tops in his field ? genetics. But his wide circle of friends knew him as a warm, generous, humorous man with many and varied interests. You couldn’t ask for better company.
Should we purposefully engineer avian flu strains to become highly transmissible in humans? In our view, no. We believe the benefits of this work do not outweigh the risks. (A column by Thomas V. Inglesby, the chief executive officer and director of the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC in Baltimore and Anita Cicero, chief operating officer and deputy directo and D.A. Henderson, a distinguished scholar.)
As a conservative and a liberal, policy wonk and professor, Washingtonian and Midwesterner ? there isn?t much we can agree on. Where we do see eye to eye is that most aid programs are less cost-effective than they could be. With money scarce and demand for college graduates high, now is the time to fix financial aid.
Madison doctor Bernie Micke has allegedly retired after practicing medicine here for 33 years, but he continues to pursue a passion that?s been with him for years ? improving the medical services in Madison?s sister city, Camaguey, Cuba. Over the years, he and the Wisconsin Medical Project, a nonprofit organization whose origins began with the Sister Cities program, have made 30 trips to Cuba, bringing with them medical equipment and supplies for doctors and nurses who do everything from basic pediatric care to treating people suffering from cancer and other major illnesses.
During the 14 years of the Bowl Championship Series, no league has benefited more from the most flawed, detested postseason system in major American sports than the Southeastern Conference. So how ironic is it that the SEC’s domination of the BCS will be the mechanism that finally brings it down, at least in its current form?….The only possible conclusion one can draw from all this is that college football fans are tiring of a bowl system that gives them unsatisfying championship games, prevents deserving teams from having a chance at the title and renders all other bowls virtually meaningless. The greed-driven BCS system may have perpetuated the best regular season in sports ? and I’m not even sure about that anymore ? but there is no doubt it has drained college football’s postseason of any drama it once had.
….the recent college conference realignments don?t seem so well-intended. The NCAA has become a campus meat market at bar time, with everyone hooking up out of desperation. “You say you need a 12th school so you can establish a conference championship football game and secure a 10-year TV deal with ESPN? Here?s the key to my apartment, big boy.” As always, money and college athletics make strange bedfellows. This is why San Diego State is sleeping with Rutgers. And it?s why our kids will have to learn geography someplace other than universities.
While State Journal columnist Chris Rickert made interesting points in his piece on the $23.5 million federal disease prevention grant UW-Madison is applying for, I take exception to his claim that fixing health insurance is a more cost-effective way to prevent disease than “disease prevention.”
