After indulging myself in HBOâ??s â??Hard Knocks,â? I have come to two realizations: The NFL depth chart is the most scrutinized aspect of the sports world, and it is a near impossibility that the time spent altering a teamâ??s depth chart eclipses the amount of time I have spent modifying my class schedule.
….This Legislature shouldn’t always be looking for new ways to close the doors on higher education. Let’s swing them open and make sure the sons and daughters of Wisconsin’s hard-working families have the opportunity to earn an affordable college degree.
If we’re serious about growing our economy and bringing new jobs to the Badger State, we better get serious about the University of Wisconsin.
….Investing in the University of Wisconsin and making college more affordable and accessible should be values everyone in the Legislature shares.
If it weren’t for the fact that everywhere you turn, you — and your kids — can see and hear beer advertising, I could get excited about those Madison city buses wrapped in a Miller Genuine Draft ad.
Let’s not come unraveled, though, over a beer ad that is presumably helping to keep bus fares down because it might corrupt the children.
….We pack our kids off to college and tell them not to touch a drink until they’re of legal age, even when they’re walking past all those tailgate parties on the way to the football game or sitting behind the Memorial Union with a 21-year-old classmate or two.
Critics on Wall Street have often quipped that the Ford Motor Co. is not a car company with health care problems but a health care company with car trouble. Strangely, the universities of the Big Ten sports conference seem to be in danger of falling prey to a similar problem as they launch an expensive new sports channel: becoming a publicly funded sports franchise with classrooms.
For four months this year, while Congress was overhauling student loan laws, I traveled the country in a beat-up RV meeting with citizens and legislators. My mission was simple: Persuade Congress to restore consumer protections to student loan borrowers. After 22,000 miles, 42 states and five flat tires, I can’t help but feel that my efforts were a waste of time. And gas.
The recent State Journal story on ethanol should have read, “Are we too energy dependent?” The answer is yes. Wisconsin consumers paid $19 billion for energy in 2005 with at least $12 billion leaving the state, costing us 300,000 jobs.
Wisconsinites can take pride in so many of our state ‘s achievements, but our drinking status is not among them. The Badger state regularly lands at or near the top of national rankings on high-risk or heavy drinking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And it ‘s not just college students
Head coach Bret Bielema made an example of Jamal Cooper last weekend when he dismissed Cooper for conduct detrimental to the team. Although Bielema decided to kick Cooper off the team, this was not his first infraction.
With effort, tax cutters and easy-answer advocates could learn the value of genuine partnership and mutual service.
Like time and money, such relationships are the alpha and omega of a vibrant community life.
And state support of the university can get us from here . . . to there, according to a column by Richard S. Brooks, the 2006 recipient of the Robert Heidemann Award of Excellence in Public Service at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is an outreach program manager in the division of continuing studies and teaches service learning.
Madison-based movie producer Nick Langholff helped make a dream come true for UW-Madison senior Justin Daering this week.
Daering, a Verona native, had saved some money and was trying to make a film, but things weren’t working out. So Langholff stepped in to help.
“We met at my office above Mickey’s Tavern and I told him that I get to spend whatever amount he has, however I can. I ‘ll hire everybody,” Langholff says. “And I guaranteed him, It will feel like you ‘re spending three to four times the amount.'”
In one sense, the public stare-down between the soon-to-be-launched Big Ten Network and the nation’s cable television providers is reminiscent of the contract battles between the owners and players in professional sports.
It’s hard for the little guy to figure out which side to root for when billionaires are fighting millionaires over who gets a greater share of the pie.
….It makes good sense that the state should encourage new businesses to emerge from the wellspring of research and innovation that erupts from the university. A friend of mine left the university in the late 1990s, mortgaged all his family’s worldly assets and, with seven employees, started a medical products company that now has 500 employees and assets of $1.8 billion.
But what if the state had been unwilling to invest in the university infrastructure that supported his education and research all those years prior to his start-up? What if the sagebrush rebels that impoverished university systems all across the western United States had succeeded in crippling the University of Wisconsin’s budget such that his professors had left, his program was cut prematurely, or his research had not reached the necessary level of development?
Tommy Thompson and I — and actually, most of my social friends — attended UW-Madison at approximately the same time. Even Vice President Cheney was on campus at that time.
Longtime reader Chris Wren is alarmed, and the rest of us should be, too. Wren caught the op-ed column by Stanley Fish in the New York Times on Aug. 1 about the sad state of affairs in the Florida state university system.
“The following comment caught my attention,” Wren wrote.
“Florida does not have a single campus that measures up to the best schools in the systems of Virginia, Wisconsin and Georgia, never mind first-tier states like California, Michigan and North Carolina. Climbing that hill will be an arduous task, and the key will be a persistence few states are up to.”
So, there we have it, Wren commented. “A new motto in the making: ‘UW: Setting the standard of excellence for the second tier,'” he complained.
Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Unfortunately, in the University of Wisconsin System, we have reached critical mass on the insanity meter.
Faculty begin each academic year believing that shared governance means we have a say in what happens on campus. (It doesn’t.) The Republicans in the Legislature begin each biennium by casting their first stones at UW System faculty and academic staff. When will faculty members wise up and realize that collective bargaining will actually give us a say in what goes on and will remove the bull’s-eye painted on our backsides?
Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Unfortunately, in the University of Wisconsin System, we have reached critical mass on the insanity meter.
Santa Monica, Calif. – Faced with dwindling federal support for research, more and more states like Wisconsin are stepping up to fill the shortfall with state money. But as state commitments soar higher and higher, a basic question often is left unanswered.
Who should control, profit, and otherwise benefit from discoveries made in state-funded laboratories across Wisconsin? How you settle such matters are known as intellectual property policy, and like most states, Wisconsin apparently doesn’t have a coherent, across-the-board policy.
Author: Theodore P. Gerber is a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
On Monday night’s “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central, Stephen Colbert listed badgers as his No. 1 threat of the week in his “Threat Down,” citing an Australian report of human flesh-eating badgers terrorizing the Iraqi port city of Basra.
Citing the importance of fighting the badgers “over there” so “they don’t burrow here,” he changed his tune mid-sentence.
“Just to be safe, as a preemptive measure, I say we carpet bomb the University of Wisconsin,” added Colbert. “Bucky. Bucky — that sounds like an Arab name.”
The facts simply don’t support the State Journal’s July 24 editorial praising the so-called “Video Competition” bill. A column co-written by telecommunications expert Barry Orton.
It ‘s not news that Rep. Frank Lasee hates lawyers.
On his blog, he compares them to “a plague of locusts. ”
The Green Bay Republican says we ought to cut the UW-Madison Law School out of the state budget because we have more than enough lawyers already.
In July 1971, Henry Kissinger, acting as President Nixon’s special representative, secretly traveled to Beijing. Kissinger’s voyage provided the basis for a dramatic opening in relations between the United States and China – two nations estranged from one another for more than 20 years.
Convulsed by internal upheavals and surrounded by regional threats, Chinese leaders viewed relations with Washington as a possible anchor for stability.
Some people might be surprised to realize what I have in common with bandleader Lawrence Welk, author Andrew Sullivan and radio host Larry Meiller.
Recently, the state Assembly proposed a version of the 2007-09 state budget that makes $120 million in cuts to the University of Wisconsin System. As part of those proposed reductions, this budget slashes all state support from a number of fine educational programs.
Historian Jeremi Suri writes:
President Bush confronts a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing abroad has plummeted and domestic opposition to present policies is growing. America’s long time adversary, Iran, similarly contends with a clash of generations and worldviews at home, as well as a cast of external challengers, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Security Council.
Leaders in Washington and Tehran need one another. The White House should pursue a “China opening” with Iran.
My first reaction to last summer’s news that former UW-Madison scientist Denice Denton had committed suicide by jumping off San Francisco’s tallest apartment building was disbelief.
Wisconsinâ??s families want, and deserve change. But instead of charting a new course during this budget season, the Republicans who have been running the State Assembly since 1995 are up to the same old tired budget games they have been playing for the past 12 years, the Assembly’s Assistant Minority Leader Jon Richards says in a column.
They passed a state budget in the Assembly that is chock full of accounting tricks, bad policy and pork-barrel spending and deep cuts to vital services. It contains off-the-wall ideas like ending state support for the University of Wisconsin Law School and for the AMBER alert system. At the end of the day it will threaten the long term financial stability of our state and force cuts to the priorities that middle class families in our state care most about.
But the most troubling finding from the University of Wisconsin survey is that people who hold fatalistic beliefs about cancer are more likely to put their lives at risk by smoking, not eating enough fruits and vegetables, and making other unhealthy choices.
President Bush confronts a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing abroad has plummeted, and domestic opposition to present policies is growing, even within the highest ranks of the Republican Party. America’s long time adversary, Iran, similarly contends with a clash of generations and worldviews at home, as well as a cast of external challengers, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council. Leaders in Washington and Tehran need one another. The White House should pursue a “China opening” with Iran.
In July 1971, Henry Kissinger, acting as President Nixon’s special representative, secretly traveled to Beijing. Kissinger’s voyage provided the basis for a dramatic opening in relations between the United States and China – two nations estranged from one another for more than 20 years. A column by Jeremi Suri, UW-Madison history professor and author of a just-released book on Henry Kissinger.
President George W. Bush confronts a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing abroad has plummeted, and domestic opposition to present policies is growing. America’s long-time adversary, Iran, similarly contends with a clash of generations at home, as well as a large cast of external challengers.
The time is ripe for the White House to pursue a “China opening” with Iran.
The problem is that people take things too literally.
Take Assembly Republicans, for example.
One of their bright lights must have seen the plaque at the front of Bascom Hall that quotes an 1894 Board of Regents statement: “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found. “
Recently, the Wisconsin Population Health Institute issued its State Health Report Card, giving Wisconsin a B- for overall health and a D for health disparities. Didn’t a federal agency only a month ago say our health care system was No. 1 in the country in terms of its quality? How can we have the best health care but medium to poor health outcomes?
….How can Wisconsin raise our grades? We should continue to improve access to quality medical care, and we must increase our emphasis on the other determinants of health. Reducing smoking rates, controlling obesity and reducing substance abuse are among the most important overall strategies.
(David Kindig is an emeritus professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.)
MANY OF you probably already suspected that you lived in the greatest college sports town in the universe, or at least the Big Ten, and you didn’t need a national radio host to confirm it. But last week, one did.
I finally got a chance to listen to Scott Van Pelt’s recent ode to Madison on ESPN Radio, and it was an amazing thing to hear. Van Pelt sounded like a local tourism official who occasionally takes a second drink.
Brent Moss never saw Johnny Clay carry a football for the Park High School football team, either in person or on television.
Considering Clay turned 6 years old three days after Moss led the University of Wisconsin to the January 1994 Rose Bowl championship, itâ??s a safe bet Clay never Moss play either.
And, yet, there is such a bond behind these two local legends, a bond Moss would like to fortify, if possible.
Both Moss and Clay led Park to WIAA Division 1 state championships as juniors â?? Moss in 1988 and Clay in 2005. Both were born in January. Both were multiple first-team Associated Press All-State selections â?? Moss twice and Clay three times.
Quoted: UW law professor Alta Charo.
I’ve been reading with dismay about the state Legislature’s negotiations over the budget, particularly the appropriations for the University of Wisconsin, where I work.
The Assembly wants to reduce by $100 million the amount provided to the UW in the governor’s budget. This proposed reduction comes at a time when the university is already reeling from cuts it has suffered over the last two biennial budgets. I’m having a hard time understanding why the Assembly would want to do such a thing.
When Barry Alvarez began his first full year as University of Wisconsin athletic director in 2004, he and his staff penned a memorable document.
It was a mission statement outlining 12 priorities – from academic achievement and customer service to financial responsibility and commitment to diversity – that would serve as a guide to future decision-making.
We’ve all seen the bitingly clever bumper stickers that proclaim “My child and my money go to X University.” I’m a college professor, and when my students gripe about $50,000 annual costs and associated debt, I tell them they don’t want to know what I paid a quarter-century ago (60 times less in current dollars).
(Written for the Baltimore Sun; reprinted in 7/16 Capital Times)
I’ve been reading with dismay about the state Legislature’s negotiations over the budget, particularly the appropriations for the University of Wisconsin, where I work.
The Assembly wants to reduce by $100 million the amount provided to the UW in the governor’s budget. This proposed reduction comes at a time when the university is already reeling from cuts it has suffered over the last two biennial budgets. I’m having a hard time understanding why the Assembly would want to do such a thing.
Message to the Wisconsin Assembly: You’re not supposed to let the lunatics be in charge of the asylum.
The “lunatic” in this case is Rep. Frank Lasee, who, I confess, is one of my favorite lawmakers.
Santa Monica, Calif. – The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and the Public Patent Foundation have filed our formal comments with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office supporting its rejection of human embryonic stem cell patent claims asserted by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation because the claimed advances are obvious in the light of previous stem cell research.
This is why parents live frightened lives.
Police said Monday they found a body in a field near Oregon after a search by more than 100 police officers that began at 4:30 a.m. Monday. Authorities could not confirm the body was that of Kelly Nolan, the 22-year-old UW-Whitewater student who disappeared June 23 after spending an evening drinking with her friends in downtown Madison. But Madison Police Department spokesman Joel DeSpain acknowledged the massive search was undertaken in a hope of finding items connected with Nolan.
Congratulations to the State Journal for its informative, if belated, Sunday story on the decline of UW-Madison. As a professor emeritus of political science at Madison (1969-2001), I feel the situation is worse than described for these reasons:
For those of us who were fortunate enough to know her, to study and work with her, the late University of Wisconsin professor Elaine Marks was a never-ending source of insight and joy.
….Just why Elaine (1930-2001) still lingers can be found in a new book, a collection of a dozen essays written in tribute to Elaine and ably edited by her UW colleague Richard E. Goodkin and published by the UW Press.
….I suppose I feel sorry for the people whose paths never crossed Elaine’s, which is why I wish this volume would reach a more general public, particularly at a time when that public needs to know a lot more about the day-to-day life of university professors, intellectuals and the life of the mind.
Our economy has become increasingly knowledge-based. Employers in a wide range of industries need more highly skilled workers than they once did in order to remain competitive. Workers, likewise, need new skills and higher educational credentials in order to earn a decent wage.
At the core of the public spat between the Big Ten Network and the Comcast behemoth was a seemingly innocuous comment — “Indiana basketball fans don’t want to watch Iowa volleyball” — that prompted Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany to get defensive.
In picking a fight with Comcast, the largest cable provider in the country (24 milllion-plus subscribers as of December 2006), Delany may have violated the No. 1 Rule of Confrontation: Don’t pick a fight you can’t win.
We live in an age when almost nothing goes unnoticed in the world of sports, the irrelevant as much as the relevant.
If you want to see an unfiltered video of Lakers guard Kobe Bryant ripping his employers, unflattering footage of former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn at his sister’s wedding or highlights of an autistic high school basketball player wowing the world, you can find them with relative ease.
Jim Delany is a smart guy. He’s got a law degree and has spent nearly 30 years as a collegiate conference commissioner, the last 18 as the Big Ten’s head honcho. He has presided over a number of advancements in collegiate athletics over that time, from the addition of Penn State to the league in 1991, to the establishment of a conference hoops tournament and the advent of instant replay in football.
But even smart guys can lose their wits from time to time, especially when they get their dander up. Such was the case with Delany on Thursday, when he used a conference call with reporters regarding the fledgling Big Ten Network to take a giant cable outfit to task for perceived slights against the Big Ten.
When Tam Flarup becomes a hall of famer next month, she will do so with a sense of worthiness shared by her one-time roommate.
There was a time in the late 1970s when Flarup was the lone woman in the University of Wisconsin sports information office and Jan Helwig was only female on its athletic training staff. As such, they bunked together in hotels when traveling with the UW women’s basketball team.
Like many of you, I was inspired when, as a freshman, I first read the plaque placed on the UW-Madison’s Bascom Hall. The message, declared by the Board of Regents in 1894, is worth repeating:
“Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”
Don’t look now but Wisconsin’s once beleaguered College Savings Program is suddenly a hot commodity.
The state’s “529” savings plans — EdVest and Tomorrow’s Scholar — now boast nearly 228,000 accounts. That’s up about 7 percent from a year ago and 45 percent over the past four years.
The growth is even more impressive when you consider the history of the Wisconsin 529 program, named after its section number in the IRS code that allows earnings to grow tax-free.
….This remains the great state University of Wisconsin, not some rinky-dink outfit on the Internet. We have standards and a great history. Are we willing to drop “the great state university” moniker and just call the UW “a university with state and corporate support”?
Maybe U.S. Bank could help with admissions. Those with their bank card oh, let’s not go there.
Entering into contracts that harm students but profit the university without transparency and open bidding is an outrage….
“I Got a Crush … on Obama,” the viral music video that exploded onto the Web last week with a risque beauty crooning her adoration for Sen. Barack Obama, has been watched by roughly 20 million people on YouTube, CNN, ABC, MSNBC and at its original home, barelypolitical.com.
The guy behind this phenomenon is Ben Relles, a 32-year-old New York advertising executive at Agency.com, who dreamed up the idea while walking home from work one day and co-wrote the song. What’s not as well known about Relles is that he was born in Madison and lived here for six years before moving to Philadelphia, then returned here for college, getting an undergraduate degree from UW-Madison in 1997.
If you’ve followed University of Wisconsin sports long enough to remember when Camp Randall Stadium had walk-up ticket booths, when Bucky Badger was the center court logo of choice and when six-figure coaching salaries were rare, then you have endured a lot of changes.
Author: Maureen Durkin is an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsinâ??s School of Medicine and Public Health.
Did Sen. Glenn Grothman really want the government checking bloodlines?
He’s proposed that those seeking a racial preference show that their ancestry’s at least 25% of the favored minority or that they show some knowledge of the culture they’re said to be diversifying a university with.
Does he mean this? The West Bend Republican wouldn’t say directly. But everything else he said suggests he’s really calling the race charlatans’ bluff: “If we don’t stop this thing, it’ll ruin America,” he says.
By PATTY LOEW: Last month when Jay Wilson left WKOW TV Channel 27 after 27 years (how appropriate), Wisconsin sports lost, not only one of its finest sportscasters, but also one of the nicest guys in the business.
In an industry that attracts big egos, I’ll remember Wilson as one of the most genuine and humblest TV personalities I’ve encountered. And witty? I always enjoyed his self-effacing banter and admired his ability to keep sports in perspective. But that’s not the only reason I’ll miss him.
Knowing Madison-raised actor Bradley Whitford of “West Wing” fame might read your script is darn good incentive to write a play. That’s what the Wisconsin Wrights New Play Development Project offered in a new endeavor between the UW-Madison Continuing Studies in Theatre, the University Theatre, and the Madison Repertory Theatre.
American Transmission Co.’s Mark Williamson announced last week that his power line firm rejects the notion that a new east-west transmission line could be built underground along the Beltline.
….Because the UW’s Arboretum stretches along the north side of the Beltline, the overhead route would have to run south of the highway. The amount of room there, especially since reconstruction of the frontage road, is minimal at best. Go look for yourself. It’s easy to see why Department of Transportation staff is deeply concerned….
Gary Kohlenberg has devised a financing structure and a branding concept that would help Gov. Jim Doyle as he tries to push guaranteed funding for students pursuing higher education through the Legislature.
Doyle’s Wisconsin Covenant has been running into heavy resistance in the Legislature, mainly because its financing has been purposely left unclear.
Providing a package of loans and subsidies for every eighth-grader who signs a pledge to earn a B average and exhibit good behavior in high school makes a lot of sense in a state where only 25% of the population holds a baccalaureate, two points below the national average.
There is almost unanimity that education is the ticket to prosperity in an innovation economy.
