Category: Opinion

Letter to the editor: The same university that opens its mouth to speak on countless social issues and found it necessary to remove a “racist” rock suddenly finds itself unable to comment on students supporting terrorists who murder children.

Rebranding of University of Wisconsin System is unnecessary change that will likely not have intended impact.

Conservatives have been claiming for decades that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is brainwashing young people to make them liberals. The problem with that claim is that some of the most right-wing figures in American politics are UW grads.

Letter to the editor: As a UW-Madison alum, I read with embarrassment the article “Profanities, lewd behavior mar conference livestream.”

An engineering professor in Platteville. A student counselor in Whitewater. A crops and soils expert in Dodge County.

These are just a few of the 41,000 University of Wisconsin System employees waiting for top Republican lawmakers to release their 4% raise.

Column by president of the Badger Institute, a free-market think tank based in Milwaukee.

Letter to the editor: Power politics has become the norm in Madison and has pushed good governing aside. Rather than employing the power of his office by denying pay increases to UW’s employees Vos should take his case to the UW Board of Regents as they are the governing body for the UW System.

This program certainly has the potential to be helpful to incoming first-generation students, but it is long overdue and needs much more development to truly support first-generation Badgers.

Letter to the editor: In spite of many corporations and business embracing employee diversity and inclusion programs Vos sees the UW programs as ineffective and creating racial divisions by focusing support on these specific groups of students.

Republican-proposed bill aims to guarantee admission to UW-Madison for in-state students, ironically represents chance to expand access to underrepresented students.

When the forefront response to a student being beaten into a coma is to state that her situation is some sort of anomaly to campus living, it becomes crucial for us as students to look back and understand these statistics of abuse to be a result of Madison-specific institutional enabling.

Letter to the editor: I don’t know why Vos has a problem with diversity and equity, except that maybe he just wants our UW System schools to follow Florida’s lead and remove all positions which may ensure equal treatment under the law. What’s next? Removal of all courses that teach theoretical subject matter?

Despite leading hateful sermons on college campuses, Christian preacher garners broad support online.

The struggle to find affordable housing in Madison is at an all time high.

While not doing much about climate change, the Biden administration has managed to increase the cost of living and weaken national security. Canceling oil leases signals to markets that making new investments won’t be profitable. This restricts domestic supply, increases prices and weakens Western economies. It also bankrolls our adversaries. Russia depends on higher oil prices to finance its war. Mr. Biden has also drawn down the strategic petroleum reserve and, more recently, allowed huge Iranian oil sales to China. The climate-change war on domestic fossil-fuel production is truly an all-around disaster.—Anika Horowitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison, economics

As this controversy unfolds, it is important to know the law and practice of judicial recusal and impeachment in Wisconsin and beyond — a topic that we, as scholars of state courts and constitutions, have studied closely. In short, recusal is rare, and impeachment is even rarer.

Conservation must include more diverse voices from people of color to truly enact change.

Despite Evers’ partial-veto targeting DEI funding, Republicans continue to threaten UW System

Listen again to the title track of Van Morrison’s groundbreaking 1968 album “Astral Weeks” and you will instantly be reminded of Richard Davis’s genius.

Virtually every policy that governs our higher education system is based on a
dangerous myth — that students do, and should, meticulously shop around for
colleges nationwide and pick the best fit.

When will UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin explain to the public, alumni, faculty, staff and students how the latest expansion of what was formerly known as the Big Ten Conference will further the educational mission of the UW-Madison campus?

Then there are the culture wars against public universities, especially UW-Madison. Even as the state’s financial contribution has dwindled, Republicans this summer pick picked a fight over meager budgets for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and blocked construction of a UW-Madison engineering building. Inventing and then enflaming such issues is most of what Republicans offer their base.

The report suggests three factors that are driving the increase: exploding administrative staffs, a building boom and subsidies to athletic programs. Especially noteworthy was the finding that even as state governments slashed their support for their flagship universities, the schools continued to increase spending. They more than made up for the cuts with increases in tuition. For every one dollar in state support that was lost, these schools, on average, increased tuition and fees by $2.40.

But that apparently did not happen at UW-Madison, where tuition was frozen for about a decade. The UW was not one of the six schools that the Journal highlighted in its story, but it probably was part of the database of 50 schools that fed into the report’s median numbers.

We each have a voice, and it’s our responsibility to use our voices to enact meaningful change. Gen Z could be the generation that champions nuclear energy and fights back against climate change. In fact, we have to. It’s time to seize this valuable opportunity to hold politicians accountable and take action to create reliable and zero-carbon energy.

-Grace Stanke is 2023’s Miss America and is studying nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Karly Matthews is the communications director for the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a nonprofit organization that advocates for climate solutions such as nuclear energy.

Letter to the editor: The state of Wisconsin could profit abundantly if the Legislature and the University of Wisconsin worked together instead of having State Street be paved with disrespectful and biased rhetoric.