Fifteen years ago, Barry Alvarez’s first adult portion of the Michigan Wolverines was served cold. Wisconsin lost by 38, Camp Randall had empty seats and a lone Michigan fan with a boom box made it worse by playing that harder-to-get-out-of-your-head-than-the-Macarena fight song that reverberated throughout the silent stadium with each score, which was often.
The Big Blue menace, then, has been as much a part of the Alvarez legacy as anything, including the three Rose Bowl championships.
Editor’s Note: This is an official response to the Sep. 7, 2005 Cardinal View in which our editorial board criticized the Halloween no-guest rule in UW-Madison dorms.
The Division of University Housing provides a residential community for 7,000 undergraduate students. The residence halls are students’ homes-we are not in the business of running a hotel.
Progress reports, parent-teacher conferences and detention slips are all elements of years past ââ?¬â? or so we thought. It turns out that University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to bring the parents back into the school with a new parental notification policy announced last week. Students who thought that upon arriving in Madison they were ââ?¬Å?freeââ?¬Â from their parents are shocked at this policy change. But after a reported 14 trips to detoxification so far this semester, I say it is about time we do something.
With Thursday’s release of the Steingass report-an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Paul Barrows’ employment status-came a slew of new allegations of sexual harassment, decision-making errors and further knowledge of the debates among top UW-Madison officials as the Barrows controversy unfolded.
After a year of eerie silence blended with sordid deceit, the University of Wisconsin opened the blinds on the Paul Barrows affair Thursday afternoon.
There are still too few women at the top, too many at the bottom. Every few years, a report that women are gaining ground prompts panicky articles proclaiming that ââ?¬Å?men are falling behind!ââ?¬Â Don’t get me wrong: I believe in equality for all. I’m concerned about women’s status and I’m concerned about the race, ethnicity and income divisions revealed in the Department of Education survey.
Editorial by Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women
Where the Boys Are, released in 1960, is the quintessential college spring-break movie. Today, visitors to college campuses can’t help but ask: Where are the boys? Currently, 135 women receive bachelor’s degrees for every 100 men. That gender imbalance will widen in the coming years, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Education.
very year, approximately 100 UW-Madison students are admitted to emergency detoxification. So far this semester, 14 students have been so admitted to university hospitals-most of them 18- or 19-years old. Beginning this week, university policy will direct the Office of the Chancellor to formally notify parents and guardians when “their son or daughter has been involved in a gravely serious situation,” including detox. This action is both inconsistent and dangerous for underage students.
Riot gear and pepper spray have defined Madison’s annual Halloween party for the last three years, staining the image of Madison and the university. In our view, there are two major problems that must be dealt with if the city is to enjoy a safe and uneventful weekend this year. The influx of people from closing bars creates a chaotic, congested State Street and, second, most rioters are intoxicated outsiders with no stake in the Madison community.
….Frankly, John Wiley deserves a pat on the back. It’s well past time that someone at the university stood up to these bullies.
The UW hasn’t had a great public relations year, to be sure. The lengthy Paul Barrows paid leave and the three professors who remained on the payroll after being convicted of felonies became perfect targets for exploitation. The Nasses and Suders never make an attempt to understand how that might happen before running their mouths and calling for the Legislature to punish the UW.
The University of Wisconsin ââ?¬â? and the public at large ââ?¬â? has known since March that Lewis Keith Cohen is something more than just an unsavory character. He has admitted to charges involving the electronic transmission of child pornography and using the Internet to arrange for a sexual rendezvous with a 14-year-old boy.
Despite the relatively rare public invocation of the process, much hoopla has been made of late over the University of Wisconsin administration�s use of so-called back-up positions. The jobs, veritable fall-back posts for certain employees who lose their discretionary positions for one reason or another, offer some modicum of job security and guaranteed income to those who otherwise might find their names gracing the unemployment rolls on a whim.
After two years of talks, allegations of negotiating in bad faith and a disastrous and illegal two-day strike in April 2004, the Teaching Assistants Association and Wisconsin�s Office of State Employment Relations are still no closer to an agreement for the 2003-05 contract period.
UW-Madison freshman Sam Melameb, who intended to study at Tulane University this year, arrived on campus from New Orleans last week with “eight articles of clothing and a pair of sandals.” Despite the traumatic circumstances that brought him to Madison, Melameb is responsible to pay tuition to both institutions. According to Tulane University, students who are enrolled for the current semester and are studying elsewhere will not be immediately refunded, despite the school’s temporary closing.
The UW has a huge public relations problem that it needs to fix, especially when it comes to the immediate firing of convicted felon professors charged with heinous sex crimes. I was one of two guests last week on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ on the Fox News channel to talk about this issue. Bill O’Reilly and his producers had asked me to come on to discuss three criminal professors who had not been fired as of last
week, but had already been convicted and sentenced for their crimes.
….His upcoming appearance at the Wisconsin Union Theater is sure to pack the house with local anti-war activists.
However, there are some inconvenient facts about Galloway that aren’t often reported in the American press. Whatever one’s opinion about the Bush administration’s wars, no one who claims to be a progressive ought to have anything to do with Galloway, a dishonest, authoritarian reactionary.
WTDY-AM 1670 talk show host Casey Hoff is a bit worried that he won’t be allowed to graduate in December from the UW-Madison as planned. The reason? He got the chance Wednesday night to “rip” Chancellor John Wiley to an audience of millions on national television. And he jumped on it.
The topic was the UW-Madison professors who have been convicted of crimes and remained on the payroll, specifically Roberto Coronado, the UW Medical School professor who was sentenced to eight years in prison for repeated sexual assault of a child and fired the same day the segment aired.
It has been 18 months since the Teaching Assistants’ Association walked back into classrooms following an unsuccessful and unpopular strike. Still operating under a contract negotiated in 2001, teaching assistants are scheduled to enter mediated discussions with UW officials in upcoming weeks. Given that recent talks have proven unfruitful for the TAA, we anticipate that upcoming negotiations will be highly sensitive affairs, invoking passionate pleas from union members and student supporters. However, if one state lawmaker has his way, the TAA’s right to collective bargaining will soon disappear.
In recent days, state Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, has gained a lot of media attention by attacking the University of Wisconsin-Madison for allowing George Galloway, an anti-war member of the British Parliament, to speak on campus on Sept. 18.
He has based his objection on the fact that the Havens Center, which is based in the sociology department, is a co-sponsor of the event, leading him to claim that taxpayer money is being used to “shove” Mr. Galloway’s “pro-terrorist” views “down our throats.” I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.
(Patrick Barrett is administrative director of the A.E. Havens Center, which promotes critical social thought throughout the social sciences and is part of the sociology department at UW-Madison.)
University Housing created more problems than solutions for Halloween festivities when it declared this past summer that no guests will be allowed to stay in the dorms from Friday, Oct. 28 through Tuesday, Nov. 1. The tactic is meant to prevent out of town students, who accounted for 391 of the 450 arrests during Halloween in 2004, from attending the festivities. The no-guest policy is a dangerous step because the hazards far outweigh the benefits of keeping a minute percentage of the 75,000 party-goers away from Halloween in Madison.
In the wake of devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, the University of Wisconsin System ââ?¬â? along with other colleges and universities around the nation ââ?¬â? has taken it upon itself to help students displaced by our nationââ?¬â?¢s latest tragedy.
Imagine sending people who have been assimilated into the most stable demographic population in America into cities and towns all over the United States that are as unprepared as the victims to understand their sense of dislocation and their support needs.
….The University of Wisconsin anthropology and sociology departments may have a role to play in helping the community understand the new cultures moving into their midst.
(Shari Julian earned her doctorate in public/educational administration UW-Madison in 1979. She also earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees here. She later earned a post-doctorate degree in clinical counseling and has been a hospital clinician for 20 years. She is now a faculty member in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Texas in Arlington.)
….So when does Suder get hot and bothered about “hate speech”? When the University of Wisconsin hosts prominent speakers who dissent from the official line of the Bush White House and its allies in this country’s conservative media.
….The reality is that this appearance by Fonda and Galloway, controversial figures with something to say, is in the very best tradition of a university that has for more than a century declared: “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.”
Smoking ban needs time, exceptions
Friday classes ridiculous
Monday, August 29, 2005
MICHAEL M. COX
I was disappointed by the recent comments by President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., suggesting that it would be appropriate to include the idea known as intelligent design in science curricula.
There are many misconceptions being propagated by individuals intent on undermining science education in this country.
It is simply incorrect that controversy exists in the science community about whether evolution occurred. Evolution is a fact. I have been a scientist for 30 years. In that time, I have been to nearly 100 international conferences and have visited scores of science departments. Never once — anywhere — have I encountered a controversy about whether evolution occurred.
The people who work for Wisconsin government are being demonized once again.
Government workers are either – take your pick – lazy and shiftless or coddled and overpaid.
The latest fuel for state worker bashers came from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, which last week issued a report that shows Wisconsin public employees pay a smaller share of their retirement costs than those in other states. Plus, they then receive higher pension benefits than nearly everyone else when they retire.
One item in the new State Historical Society Museum exhibit on the bombing of UW-Madison Sterling Hall caught my attention.
It wasn’t the original FBI wanted poster for missing bomber Leo Burt or the photo of physicist Robert Fassnacht, who was killed as he worked late in his office. Or the twisted engine casing of the Ford Econoline van that contained what was, at that time, the biggest car bomb ever manufactured.
The annual ranking guaranteed to give college presidents a headache was released Monday: The Princeton Review’s list of the top party schools. This year’s No. 1 ââ?¬â? and we can shortly expect a rebuttal from its chancellor ââ?¬â? is the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Three months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally recommended that all freshmen living in dormitories be vaccinated for meningitis, college officials seem to be taking the recommendations to heart ââ?¬â? and that response is contributing to a shortage of the vaccine around the United States.
While I was in Chicago last weekend, a group of college kids, including some from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, picketed in front of the Eddie Bauer store on the so-called Magnificent Mile to urge the trendy retailer to pressure one of its Third World suppliers to treat its employees better.
….It’s an admirable cause and involves a practice that needs to be brought to light. But, in this age of the rush to the bottom for workers worldwide, all I can say is, good luck.
Wisconsin Wolves football coach Norm Killion has player concerns that Barry Alvarez never worries about.
Game-night child care is one. Backups for pregnant players is another.
“I have an Olympic-caliber soccer player who says she’ll kick for me next fall if she doesn’t get pregnant,” said Killion, who will be recruiting a new Madison-based women’s professional football team at tryouts beginning Sunday.
The decorated halls of higher education sometimes aren’t always so high-minded. In fact, they look downright dumb in some cases. Two schools that immediately come to mind are a pair of otherwise fine academic institutions marred by their leadership’s intransigence over an issue many schools long ago resolved with a few fast-disappearing traits in our nation: common sense, appropriateness and decency.
Commentary By Jon Saraceno
Much has been written over the past week about the NCAA Executive Committee’s decision not to conduct championships on the campuses of member institutions where the use of nicknames and mascots representing American Indians is considered hostile and abusive.
By Myles Brand NCAA president
Snuppy, the world’s first cloned pup, romped onto front pages last week to fascinate and provoke. Seoul National University’s puppy, whose genetic material came from a single cell from the ear of an Afghan hound, teased the public with the prospect that people might soon be able to clone their beloved dogs.
Even creating embryos for stem cells to research is morally wrong. Those of us who support a ban on all types of human cloning do so because we believe that ultimately no good can come from the procedure.
First impressions, second thoughts and the third degree:
Instead of trying to legislate its fuzzy perception of morality regarding the use of Native American nicknames, the NCAA would have been better served emphasizing one of its core values to get its point across.
The NCAA is about many things, but power is No. 1. When it singled out 18 schools last week that feature “hostile or abusive” nicknames and mascots, and threatened to ban those images from postseason tournaments starting next year, the NCAA didn’t look very tough. Downright wishy-washy is more like it.
Column by John Hawks, assistant professor of anthropology:
Last week, President Bush said this about presenting “intelligent design” alongside evolution in science classrooms: “That decision ought to be made by local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.”
National organizations of scientists immediately condemned his view. The American Geophysical Union released a statement saying Bush’s position “puts America’s schoolchildren at risk.”
We have a little time on our hands before Bret Bielema becomes the 10th coach in the modern era of University of Wisconsin football, not to mention the 10th new coach in the Big Ten Conference since UW’s unprecedented run of back-to-back Rose Bowl wins in 1999 and 2000.
I thought I would put it to use by throwing together a list of suggestions that might help Bielema prepare for his first season as coach of the Badgers.
Barry Alvarez thanked everyone but his gardener, his mechanic and the media during his news conference Thursday. Sources say the University of Wisconsin football coach/athletic director corrected those glaring oversights Friday when he bought a new electric hedge trimmer and took his Lexus convertible in to have the tires rotated.
Speaking of losers in the Great Monroe Street Handoff — Alvarez announced he will become full-time AD after the 2005 season and UW defensive coordinator Bret Bielema will take over as coach — the media is joined by a wide range of groups and individuals whose fates have been altered.
Megan Twohey’s July 24 article in the Journal Sentinel (“The protesters next door”), which described Rick Bogle’s protest of research at the National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was full of irony while missing several important points about medicine, the use of animals in medical research and the animal rights movement.
….Wisconsin scientists should be celebrated for their contributions to human and animal health. They and their families should not have to face threats from animal rights extremists. And they should not have to read articles in the Journal Sentinel that glorify extremists who support the use of violence against them.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s expert on former President Richard Nixon said he would not appear in court today for a pending disorderly conduct charge in which he allegedly called in a bomb threat to the Dean Health Plan office.
Disgruntled about a pending claim, emeritus history Professor Stanley Kutler, 70, reportedly called the insurance office on April 26 inquiring about the claim. According to the criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court, Kutler allegedly threatened to blow up the Dean Health Plan building if his claim wasn’t settled.
Quoted: Dhavan Shah, a professor of journalism and mass communications and political science at UW-Madison.
Local political experts, fearing a brutal Senate confirmation battle, expressed relief at President Bush’s choice of relative judicial newcomer John G. Roberts Jr. as his Supreme Court nominee Tuesday night.
“I’m just delighted,” said UW-Madison law professor emeritus Gordon Baldwin. “It’s better than my expectations.”
….Let’s fight for a truly independent public radio and TV. Yes, it would hurt to lose the 16 percent of the budget that comes from federal funding, and some cuts would be necessary. But knowing that contributions would be going to an independent news source, listeners would save Wisconsin public radio and TV even if the Lobbyist’s Legislature won’t give us funding.
Let’s try it. If that doesn’t work, try something else. But one thing is clear. We need public radio and TV. Don’t let them steal it.
MADISON, Wis. ââ?¬â? As with campuses across the country, the most controversial prescription medication available to students at the University of Wisconsin is the morning-after pill. (Video.)
….The girls state basketball tournament will be played at the Coliseum on the Alliant Energy Center grounds each season through 2008.
…The move allows the UW men’s hockey program to keep its priority status for scheduling in the Kohl Center. But it also gives the girls tournament a consistent home through 2008.
Quoted: Dr. Raj Veeramani, professor of engineering and business at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
MADISON, Wis. — A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor convicted of stalking remains in jail after being denied the chance to go back to work.
Medical school professor Steven Clark pleaded guilty to stalking an ex-girlfriend in March, and two weeks ago he was sentenced to one year in jail with work release.
CLEAR LAKE – Up here in Polk County, where the chain of lakes that spreads across northern Wisconsin begins, and where folks take seriously the notion that nature really is a resource to be cherished and preserved, sits a tiny village that goes by the name of Clear Lake.
Author: Ann Althouse, the Robert W. and Irma M. Arthur-Bascom professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She maintains a blog at althouse.blogspot.com.
It doesn’t look like a place that has lost millions of its state funding.
While registering for her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Rachael Barger saw manicured lawns, met staff who could answer questions, toured roomy residence halls and saw top-of-the-line technology.
Gov. Jim Doyle dismissed the latest Republican version of the state budget as smoke and mirrors after GOP leaders added a series of tax breaks and changes early Friday to win the final two votes they needed for Senate approval of the $52.9 billion plan.
The two-year budget now goes back to the Assembly after the Senate approved it 17-16 following an all-night session.
Senate leaders inserted a new tax break for parents who teach their children at home or send them to private school, a $1 million cut to UW-Madison and a new requirement for nonunion state employees to contribute toward their retirement funds.
No matter what you think about the case of Paul Barrows, the verdict is not in yet on the former University of Wisconsin vice chancellor. Nor should it be. We still don’t have all the facts.
That is partly Chancellor John Wiley’s fault. He has withheld information from the Legislature and the media as if he is a law unto himself. Yet the people of Wisconsin pay his salary. They have a right to expect him to be transparent.
Late Tuesday morning there’s a whole lot of pacing on a Bascom Hill. Every time someone shouts “background!” people start moving in well- orchestrated lines around a couple that includes a blond woman in a long ivory jacket.
The woman in question is Blythe Danner, the Tony Award-winning stage actress also known for “Meet the Fockers.” The man she’s filming the scene with is Harold Ramis, of “Stripes” and “Ghostbusters” fame.
Madison, Wis. – It would be misleading to suggest that scientists at UW-Madison or anywhere else in Wisconsin are cloning human embryos. They arenââ?¬â?¢t. In fact, no scientist in the state has even announced plans to do so.
So forgive lawmakers, especially the Republicans who dominate the Legislature, if they tend to feel a little undervalued. And understand that when they look at the University of Wisconsin System, they tend to see cushy jobs with fat salaries two, three, four and five times as big as their own.
If that’s a lawmaker’s perspective, imagine how news of the latest UW flap sounds: a vice chancellor earning $191,000 spent seven months on a paid leave of absence in part because of a failed relationship with a grad student. Yet the vice chancellor was well enough to apply for a top job at another university while UW was paying him for not working in a job UW eliminated.
Unbelievably, the right-wing Republican majority of the Wisconsin State Assembly just passed a bill to encourage student abortions.
Republicans weren’t honest enough to call it the “Let’s Have Abortions Galore” Act, but that would be the effect of prohibiting University of Wisconsin health clinics from advertising, prescribing or dispensing birth control to students.
Paul Barrows is a UW- Madison administrator who, until recently, was paid $191,749 to be vice chancellor for student affairs.
You might think that if you are getting paid $191,749 a year to be in charge of student affairs you might think twice about having a “relationship” with a student.
There were a couple of examples again this week that explain why defenders of the University of Wisconsin sometimes throw up their hands in utter frustration.
….Some day, the UW has to learn to be more above board and open to the public it serves. When it doesn’t, it just provides more grist for the mills of those with an anti-UW agenda. And, believe me, there are plenty of them around these days.
Ron Reschke of Madison, whose friend died of stomach cancer, wanted to do something to fight the terrible disease. So he started walking.
Reschke left Madison more than seven weeks ago and has put one foot in front of the other all the way to La Crosse, Eau Claire, Ashland, Rhinelander and Merrill –more than 600 miles.
He took a break in Wausau over the weekend before starting what will be the second half of his journey through Appleton, Sheboygan, Milwaukee and finally back to Madison. He chose to visit cities with cancer centers.
Sometimes the simplest reactions to complicated problems can have great impact. Reschke has managed to raise thousands of dollars for the UW-Madison Comprehensive Cancer Center. His goal before he left was to collect $30,000, with all profit going to the center.
