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.”
Former UW-Madison Chancellor Edwin Young and professor James Crow died a few days apart this week. For those of us who grew up in a post-World War II neighborhood on the West Side near Hoyt Park, when Sunset Point looked out at farms, they were the last of our fathers. We have been reminiscing via the Internet. Growing up, we all knew the UW faculty was working hard to revive and make this a great university. We all salute the contributions of these two great men.
The Supreme Court should grant the petition for review that has been filed in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case in which students have challenged a university?s use of racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate admissions.
With award season upon us, movie-lovers are rushing to the theaters to see the big contenders. And if you?re like most people, you sit fairly far back, maybe even in the very last row.
The Madison community lost a legend this week with the passing of former UW-Madison Chancellor Edwin Young. For those who witnessed the protest era of the 1960s, Young was a strong leader who stayed committed to higher education. University students today don?t recall Young, but they should know his dedication to excellence in education helped form the great University of Wisconsin as we know it today.
Anyone with more than one clock in the kitchen can sympathize with the confusion at the end of Tuesday night?s men?s basketball game between Michigan State and the Badgers. Of course, the stakes were a bit higher at the Kohl Center than when you?re trying to hit the sweet spot getting a pizza out of the oven. Apparently the officials had no choice but to go with the clock that showed time had run out just prior to Ryan Evans? improbable bank shot that would have tied the game for Wisconsin. According to another ? unofficial ? clock, Evans got the shot off in time. In the end, it didn?t matter. The official clock said Wisconsin lost, and that was that.
A deadly influenza virus has circulated widely in birds in recent years, decimating flocks but rarely spreading to humans. Nonetheless, because of its persistence in bird flocks, this highly pathogenic virus has loomed as a major public health threat. Seasonal influenza kills less than 1 percent of the people it infects. In contrast, human infections with the H5N1 virus, though exceedingly rare, are fatal in most cases. Should this virus mutate in a way that allows it to be transmitted as efficiently among people as seasonal influenza viruses are, it could take an unprecedented toll on human life.
A number of important scientific and public health questions regarding this virus remain unanswered, including the likelihood of such mutations arising and the mechanisms by which they may occur. Two recent studies co-funded by the National Institutes of Health (including research conducted by UW-Madison bird flu expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka) have shed light on how this potentially grave human health threat could become a reality.
I have to admit, I?m a little disappointed in our new budget-conscious secretary of the state Department of Health Services. So, Dennis Smith is cool with cutting government health insurance coverage for the poor to save the state money, but when it comes to saving $23.5 million aimed at getting people to do what they already know they should do ? stop smoking, eat right and generally live more healthful lives ? he caves? A few months ago, Smith declined to write a letter supporting UW-Madison?s bid for the $23.5 million, five-year federal grant.
Imagine if the University of Wisconsin had a campus in New York City dedicated to competing with MIT and Stanford for being the premiere science and high tech research campus in the nation. That possibility was on the table recently when Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a competition to create a new world-class science campus on underutilized acreage on Roosevelt Island in the East River. The land for the new campus would be given free to the university that competed successfully for it. Bloomberg was offering a $400 million grant in land and infrastructure.
Early in the debate, the state Department of Public Instruction said it could support the school only if it could prove that single-sex classes were effective. UW-Madison professor Janet Hyde was quick to point out such research did not exist. Yet we have ample proof that the current school model fails minority students, especially boys.If Hyde and the DPI applied the same test to Madison schools, the whole district would be shut down!
Let?s try a new spin on a familiar verse: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house” Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. “The stockings were hung from the chimney with care. “In hopes Nails? Tales would no longer be there. “Yes, judging by reader reaction, what Madison residents want for Christmas ? even more than a grilled Danish from Rennebohm?s ? is for the controversial sculpture adjacent to Camp Randall Stadium to go away.
The pile of my children?s new toys was reaching near-obscene heights, I?d drunk enough egg nog to float a small ship, and if I heard Karen Carpenter sing “the logs on the fire fill me with desire” one more time, I might take a Christmas tin to the kitchen radio. It was time for a little holiday detox. So on Monday, the State Journal?s official Christmas day off, I boarded my Schwinn and pedaled into work, intent on making a slight detour to see a Madison controversy that knows no season.
There is, arguably, no school in America as connected to an underlying philosophical statement of mission as the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Idea.
It?s that time of year again ? one last chance to look back and remember all the highlights of the year in Madison.
* Hilary Hahn and Valentina Lisitsa Feb. 17 at the Wisconsin Union Theater
* ?They Marched Into Sunlight? March 26, University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department
* Sean Scully Paintings and Watercolors Oct. 22 through Jan. 15, 2012, at the Chazen Museum of Art
The UW athletic department is self-funded. The athletic department operating budget does not receive state aid. During the 2010-2011 academic year, the athletic department revenues were $81.7 million. The largest chunk, $27.3 million, was ticket sales, and its share of Big Ten Conference revenue was $23.3 million. Other revenue is derived from private and corporate gifts, $13.8 million, and concessions, $6.8 million. The athletic department?s revenue covers salaries, operating expenses, and athlete scholarships.During recent years, returns on investments have been twofold. UW teams have been very successful on the field. On-field success leads to more merchandise sales, more paid attendance, and more television and postseason revenue. Businesses throughout the state, including bars, restaurants and clothing stores, benefit from UW athletics.
According to an April 2011 study by NorthStar Economics Inc., the UW athletic department has a total economic impact of nearly $1 billion on the state of Wisconsin. The NorthStar study revealed 8,853 jobs were created and supported, and nearly $53 million of tax revenue was generated by the athletic department.The last line of a popular song played at UW sports games is, ?When you say Wisconsin, you?ve said it all.? The self-funded athletic department might not literally do it all; however, it has a significant impact on the state?s economy, without costing taxpayers a dime.
The following is a guest post by Gilles Bousquet, the dean of the Division of International Studies and vice provost for globalization at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is also chair of the Statewide International Education Council and co-chair of the University of Wisconsin System Task Force on Economic Development and Globalization.
At a roundtable discussion last spring in Milwaukee hosted by the Wisconsin International Education Council, the vice president of global human resources at Johnson Controls told educators: ?Our talent development and acquisition activities across the organization are the most critical factors for us as a company to grow and to thrive. So, it is all about people.? At a series of meetings I had with business officials in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai in November, executives at several American companies ? including giants like 3M and Caterpillar in addition to up-and-coming ones like Madison-based Promega and TrafficCast ? vigorously repeated that same message.
“I think it?s safe to say the goals of Madison Prep would be universally shared,” said Adam Gamoran, director of the university?s Wisconsin Center for Education Research and a supporter of the school. But there’s disagreement among faculty about whether Madison Prep is “the right vehicle,” he said, and “for that reason, it would not be appropriate for the university as a whole or the school of education or WCER to take a stand as an institution.”
The news of former Chancellor Biddy Martin?s departure from her post was a fitting and predictable ending to a tumultuous academic year in Madison. Upon announcing her decision, Martin insisted she was not leaving because of the political failure of the New Badger Partnership, but the deflated atmosphere that her resignation created proved the commitment of the Biddy faithful.
It was one little line buried at the bottom of the University of Wisconsin men?s basketball box score, but it stood out even more than Jordan Taylor?s 10 assists or UW-Green Bay?s 32.1 percent shooting. Attendance: 17,076. It had been 143 games, dating back to 2003, since the attendance total at a Badgers home game was anything but 17,230, which is the Kohl Center?s official capacity for basketball.
….Whatever the reason, UW is finding it harder to sell tickets. And while there’s nothing UW can do about the economy, athletic department officials would be wise to start treating the paying customers with more respect because, ultimately, they’re the ones carrying the wallets.
WASHINGTON ? Politicians love to celebrate, not chastise, big-time college athletics. There were two exceptions: More than 100 years ago, when President Theodore Roosevelt intervened to clean up the brutality of college football, and almost 40 years ago, when Congress passed Title IX, requiring colleges and universities to allocate a fair share of their athletic budgets to women. Both worked. Washington may be about to step in again.
Philip Ball writes in The Guardian about another new initiative from NSF to fund ?potentially transformative? research. He begins his essay with this…
Early in my career, years before I recall being pejoratively called a “filter” or a member of the “mainstream media,” discussions of journalism ethics focused on the straightforward divide between so-called “objective” news reporting and editorial page writing. Today, the Internet has blown up traditional definitions of who is and isn?t a journalist by removing virtually all barriers to entry. There was this adage: Don?t start a fight with someone who buys his ink by the barrel or paper by the boxcar. So obsolete.
Quoted: UW-Madison professor of journalism Stephen Ward, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics.
Nowhere does it say the WIAA state basketball tournaments must be played in Madison and I, for one, say it?s time to hit the road. The hockey tenants at the Kohl Center apparently want to exercise their right to use the building every March for postseason play. We?re told they?d rather have access without tripping over a bunch of high school basketball players or having a hardwood floor cover their ice.
I am confused about Gov. Scott Walker?s inspiration for taking money from UW-Madison, one of the premier educational institutions in the world working on advancing human knowledge in breakthrough subjects you can?t even pronounce, then letting Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation give $4 million to a group of overpaid “experts” at Spectrum Brands who can?t make batteries or waffle irons without going bankrupt and losing the stockholders? money.
It is the new normal to find a student who is working to pay off massive college debt for decades after graduation. [A column by Brandon Weathersby, a UW-Madison student who will graduate this month.]
Regarding the legal conflict between UW Medical Foundation and Meriter Hospital, I?m a family physician and employee of UWMF. I practice at UW Health Sun Prairie Clinic, and admit my patients and deliver babies at Meriter Hospital.I plead with both sides to step back from the courtroom.
