Category: Opinion

Madison is a city that prides itself on its natural beauty. Most of this beauty comes from the five lakes surrounding the isthmus. Unfortunately, these lakes, which are locales of summertime activities and provide majestic vistas, also have foul odors and murky water unfit for swimming in.

he MultiCultural Student Coalition is a dynamic group on campus that extends its services of diversity education to all students on campus with a specific emphasis on social justice and campus climate. This specific focus is meant to respond to students whose needs are often unmet or underdeveloped in an intuitional setting.

When University of Wisconsin students approached Dean of Students Lori Berquam with the â??Think Campaignâ? in spring 2006, the idea was easy to support. Fighting oppressive attitudes on campus seemed to be uniquely opportune, especially in light of the anti-gay incident in Ogg Hall.

Affirmative action is a withering cause. Since the late 1970s, state referendums and court rulings have given the program a slow but steady beating â?? a bruising that must give comfort to opponents of racial equality everywhere.

In a column I wrote last semester I referred to the new UW holistic admissions policy as racist. I think that the policy adopted by the Board of Regents seeks to solve a legitimate problem â?? a lack of diversity on UW System campuses â?? but does so without addressing any of the underlying causes of why minority students in Wisconsin are unprepared for college.

You call that Halloween? You call that neutered, watered-down, city-sponsored, band-infested, well-policed, benign event Halloween? Celebrants from years ago would barely recognize what the city has wrought upon a fabled student tradition â?? the unbridled carnage and tomfoolery of Halloween on State Street.

Madison Area Technical College — MATC to most of us — is going great guns, now serving more than 43,000 students at its seven campuses and turning out graduates in many of today’s high-tech skills. Ninety percent of them take jobs right here at home.

But the school’s president, Bettsey Barhorst, is still perplexed that more area high school grads who can’t get into the University of Wisconsin-Madison as freshmen aren’t taking advantage of a new program that allows them to get a two-year liberal arts associate degree at MATC and then guarantees them admission to the UW-Madison for their junior and senior years.

This school year, UW-Madison has already dealt with two reports of men with weapons on campus.
Buildings were locked down and searched, and both incidents ended without injuries.

But an unpublicized incident this week raises questions about how well the university and larger community deals with the issue behind the Virginia Tech campus shootings: student mental health problems that threaten others.

Of all the great traditions enrooted at the University of Wisconsin, it is the timeless pledge to â??ever encourage that fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be foundâ? that students ought to be most proud of â?? and most eager to defend.

The University of Wisconsin Police Department has made necessary advances toward developing an emergency plan in the case that an incident on the scale of the Virginia Tech shootings arises on a UW campus.

Leaders of student protests 40 years ago didn ‘t have the problems of those today.
There were no iPods, no Xboxes, no Facebook, no cell phones.

And no “Grey’s Anatomy.”

In the past week, sections of UW-Madison campus were locked down twice. The first was last Tuesday after Jesse A. Miller called the Dane County Crisis Center and saying he was at the UW Hospital, had a weapon and wanted to be killed by police.

The second occurred Friday after a man robbed an Italian deli on Regent Street. Following the robbery, police locked down the Welcome Center, Newell Smith Residence Hall and Ogg Hall because a suspect of interest was inside the Center.

Wisconsin ‘s military veterans deserve our gratitude and support. One way we recognize their sacrifice is by helping them earn their college degrees. Those educational benefits should be preserved, and they should be paid for.

Together with state legislators on both sides of the political aisle, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents has steadfastly supported veterans.

Student rights are under attack. Thatâ??s right, I said it.

Dean of Students Lori Berquamâ??s recent comments on student activism indicate that either she is willfully ignorant of student organizing around issues affecting this campus or she would prefer to divert attention away from campuswide activism completely.