MADISON ââ?¬â?? As the Legislatureââ?¬â?¢s budget-writing committee wrestles with balancing the stateââ?¬â?¢s biennial budget, calls for additional cuts in spending by the University of Wisconsin System will likely move front and center. In some ways, thatââ?¬â?¢s logical: The UW System budget is one of the stateââ?¬â?¢s five biggest spending programs.
It is most unfortunate that this commentary did not appear in The Capital Times sooner. I submitted it to the paper via e-mail on Friday, May 13, the day after Jacob Stockinger’s article appeared on the renaming of the Elvehjem Museum, thinking it important that the public have all the facts. Evidently, the dog ate it. I guess these things happen, and I do accept Dave Zweifel’s e-mail apology.
There is no question that Conrad A. Elvehjem was a great biochemist, a respected member of the UW faculty, an outstanding administrator, and, together with his wife Connie, well loved in the Madison community.
And thus it is very appropriate that a building on campus be dedicated in his honor the same way as many buildings are named for distinguished faculty members, deans and administrators. However, there is no particular reason for an art museum to be named for him.
If I had my way, students wouldn’t pay any tuition to attend a public university.
That’s what I told a small, but vocal, group of University of Wisconsin students who attended a speech I gave earlier this month as they pressed me for remedies to the escalating cost of college tuition. And I meant what I said.
A bill in Congress would offer federal grants to encourage researchers to destroy new human embryos from fertility clinics for their stem cells.
The latest headlines in embryonic stem cell research come from South Korea. Scientists there announced last week that they had used cloning techniques to create stem cells that genetically match sick patients, making rejection by the body less likely.
If you cheer for, write checks for, lose sleep over and/or generally obsess about University of Wisconsin athletics, then you might want to pay attention here.
According to a study by two British anthropologists, published today in the journal Nature, wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning in sports.
Go Big Red, indeed.
and the UW Band’s anthem-singing Alexis Schrubbe, you’ll have to excuse the Mother of the Bride if she cries.
Janet Dettlaff (who kept her maiden name, as her daughter Alexis also plans to do) has even better reasons for her tears than most moms in her shoes.
At an unusual garage sale this week, the musty smell of old wood and sight of truly ugly plaid upholstery took me right back to my student apartment days.
Five old homes that have housed generations of students are going the way of horses and buggies. So Sonya Newenhouse and her Madison Environmental Group were hired by Great Dane Development to hold a “deconstruction sale” in the 400 block of West Gorham Street.
Over in the UW-Madison’s botany department, staff are watching, waiting and hoping for blooms. On Newton’s Apple Tree.
The tree, a sprig grafted from the tree that dropped an apple on Sir Isaac Newton and inspired his deep thoughts on gravity, was planted in the Botanical Garden near Chamberlin Hall in 2001.
It was a gift from congressman James Sensenbrenner, a UW-Madison Law School graduate. The National Institute of Standards and Technology gave it to Sensenbrenner for his service as chairman of the House Committee on Science.
Two years ago, a few blooms became apples, but some students snatched the forbidden fruit before it could be officially harvested, says Mo Fayyez, garden director. (Check out his amazing planting database at www.botany.wisc.edu.)
“We were planning to make a Newton Apple Pie and give it to the chancellor or the congressman,” says Fayyez. Last year’s bad weather meant no pollination. This year, the warm streak in April might have done the trick. He’s crossing his fingers.
Imagine what that pie might fetch on eBay.
Tuesday’s hearing on the “conscience bill,” designed to protect pharmacists from birth control pills, featured a Catholic UW-Madison pharmacy student who had “sleepless nights” trying to decide whether to continue in pharmacy school after he learned – on the Internet, no less – that birth control pills can destroy fertilized eggs. He wants the government to protect his religious right to refuse to give out drugs that doctors prescribe for patients.
I find all of this concern for my eggs touching; it makes me want to break out into the old Monty Python song, “Every Sperm Is Sacred.”
There are thousands of ways to illustrate the volatile nature of coaching at the major college level, but this one just came across my desk:
The University of Wisconsin is in the process of hiring its 10th head coach since 2000. That’s half of its current lineup (20 coaches for 23 programs). That’s a lot of turnover in a pretty short period of time.
As I see President Bush traveling about the country telling us of Social Security’s impending bankruptcy and describing, although not precisely, what he wants to do about it, I wonder what my teacher, Wisconsin’s own Ed Witte, would have to say….
(David B. Johnson, emeritus professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studied under Edwin E. Witte as a graduate student.)
Madison is an easy sell in May when white sails glide across Lake Mendota and the air is heavy with apple blossoms.
But there are those who sell Madison when it’s tough: during the melting mud season of March, while being panhandled and heckled and propositioned by pimply adolescents.
I write shortly after the Mifflin Street block party. About 20,000 revelers enjoyed tradition, as hundreds of thousands have before them. Many say “let them play,” while others would “make them pay.” This annual, open-air beer bash regularly results in student riots, burning and looting, with multiple arrests and individuals incapacitated from alcohol. This year students defied the city and other officials, and some will bear the burden. It was an “orderly” event; “only” 225 arrests were made (more than 1 percent of attendees). Chilly, overcast weather kept crowds, and hence, ambulance calls, down.
Mentions a University of Wisconsin-Madison study that shows that energy efficiency and cleaner fuels and cars can create a brighter future in Wisconsin.
In the early morning hours of April 10, three students at Miami University-Oxford were killed when a fire broke out in an off-campus rental home. One of the three was said to have been killed by the blaze itself and the two remaining victims were pronounced dead from carbon-monoxide poisoning. Although details of the cause of the fire are still under investigation, it was certainly accidental, meaning it could have been anything as innocent as a dropped cigarette to a stove being left on.
A tragedy like this one cannot be ignored and must call our attention to our own safety right here at the University of Wisconsin. With many students renting housing after their freshman years, it is important to assure these students will be safe in the chance of a fire like the one that occurred at Miami University.
Editor’s note: John Geddes, managing editor of the New York Times, was the scheduled keynote speaker Saturday night at the 100th anniversary celebration of the founding of the UW-Madison School of Journalism of Mass Communication. Here are excerpts from his prepared remarks.
The mood of the moment seems to be that the world of journalism is deteriorating before our eyes.
Two weeks ago media magnate Rupert Murdoch told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that the end of newspapers as we know them is nigh. My colleague Nick Kristof soon opined that the climate of press freedom is more ominous in the United States than at any time in the past century. Six weeks ago Jeffrey Rosen of New York University somewhat jocularly called for the commissioning of a new book titled “Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die.” And everywhere online, there’s some correspondent taking a whack at MSMs, the acronym of the day for most of us in the mainstream media.
Thirty years ago at UW-Madison, 12 club sports for women were officially integrated into the athletic department and received varsity status. These 12 sports – badminton, basketball, crew, cross country, fencing, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field and volleyball – had 109 participants, with no scholarships and a budget of $118,000.
Today, the UW-Madison still supports 12 women’s varsity sports (lightweight crew, ice hockey, softball and soccer added; badminton, fencing, field hockey and gymnastics eliminated). There are nearly 400 women student-athletes, 227 on scholarship. Today’s women’s athletics budget exceeds $9 million.
If you’re lucky enough to have a ticket for one of the virtually sold-out shows of “The Producers” this week, look in the pit.
While touring shows often tap a bit of local talent to round out the orchestra, this show hired 22 local musicians. Actually, they turned to Madison Symphony Orchestra’s GM Ann Bowen and UW-Madison’ School of Music’s Les Thimmig to find the local musicians.
As many of you know, I, along with 10 other alders, gave a letter to Mayor Dave Cieslewicz last week asking him to submit a bill to the Associated Students of Madison. This bill would have been for the cost difference between the Miffin party originally planned for May 7 and the one negotiated by ASM for April 30.
It began as an initiative to save tax dollars for prisons has become a potentially major headache for UW students. Due to the success of prisons that do not purchase foods together in bulk, Gov. Doyle felt that implementing a similar plan in the UW System would allow for the same control and a decreased budget
onsidering that amid much controversy, students were left guessing when the official Mifflin Street Block Party would be until April 22, the end result was a testament to the understanding developed between the city, police and partygoers.
The University of Wisconsin�s journalism program has much to celebrate as it concludes this academic year. This year, 2005, marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the journalism program at UW, which was one of the first institutions to recognize students should be equipped with special reporting training before graduation.
A column by Cheryl Bailey, UW-Madison senior associate athletic director, on the history of Title IX and the need to maintain the strength of the rule to protect women’s intercollegiate athletics, despite Bush Administration efforts to scale it back.
As America’s economy continues shifting from one that is predominantly manufacturing to one primarily knowledge driven, Wisconsin must remember the lessons it learned more than 100 years ago.
That was when the Industrial Revolution changed our economy from being based in agriculture to one based in manufacturing.
This responds to Eric Sandgren’s April 23 guest column quarreling with suggestions that the UW-Madison is “deliberately secretive” regarding its use of animals in research. As a reporter who has covered this issue for Isthmus, I would like to bring a few facts to your readers’ attention.
Until August 2003, members of the public were able to attend the meetings of UW-Madison committees at which the protocols of animal experiments are reviewed, in accordance with federal law. This policy was abruptly changed, and now the public is excluded from this portion of the meetings.
Susan Lampert Smith’s column on Thursday, “Mifflin block party may get a visitor to remember,” about the young man who fell off a Mifflin Street balcony after having too much to drink was illuminating. One of the things that struck me most was the young man’s mother’s comments about the patient population at the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Center: “Half the people are in there because of alcohol-related accidents. Maybe three-fourths of them, if you count accidents where someone else was drinking and driving.”
We appreciate very much the sentiment of your Wednesday editorial (ââ?¬Å?Failing Laundry 101ââ?¬Â), which calls out some of our colleagues for pulling a cheap political stunt at the expense of students by asking that the Associated Students of Madison be sent the bill for policing the Mifflin Street block party this weekend.
Quoted: Charles O. Jones of the University of Wisconsin
Students drinking beer at Saturday’s Mifflin Street block party might see a young man in a wheelchair rolling down the 400 block of Mifflin Street.
If it’s a slight young man with reddish hair, it will be the new Jason Gratzl. He won’t be looking for a beer. He’ll be looking for the Mifflin Street balcony where, last August, the old Jason Gratzl disappeared, probably forever.
“….Restricting stem cell research to existing lines will send the message that Wisconsin does not care about lifesaving research and is not interested in retaining its place as a leader in bioscience. It will weaken our efforts to retain a highly educated work force and discourage the best students and scientists from coming here.
“As a registered nurse, I firmly believe in pursuing the promise this research holds for preventing debilitating diseases, easing suffering, and preventing premature death….”
Just in case any of you have a lingering suspicion that I am sophisticated, this is going to end it: I saw the Madison Opera production of “The End of the Affair” last week and I hated it.
I didn’t like the music. I didn’t like the characters. I didn’t like the story.
It’s easy to imagine old hippies around Madison raising gray eyebrows over the Mifflin Street Block Party dispute.
Back in 1969, the party was held in defiance of Mayor Bill Dyke, who refused to give the hippies a party permit.
Now Wisconsin’s utilities are playing catch-up with building projects. MGE’s recent proposed increase, for example, is to cover the cost of a natural-gas-fired power plant to begin operation this summer on the UW-Madison campus and for improvements to the electric transmission grid.
….For decades, many unfairly considered state schools to be, as they say at Oxford, “redbrick” — second rate diploma mills. Now, just as U.S. public universities are finally winning the global recognition they deserve for quality, their very future is suddenly in doubt.
What is happening? State by state, the social compact that supported higher education is being dismantled.
(This Washington Post guest column by Paul Trible, president of Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, appeared in the 4/25/05 print edition of The Capital Times)
James Burgess, former publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal, has contributed $1 million to the UW-Madison School of Journalism in efforts to raise integrity and ethics among future journalists who attend this school. Increasing the amount of courses devoted to ethics within the Journalism School will bring to light the importance of responsible writing and the obligation of truth journalists owe to society.
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz’s announcement Thursday morning that the city of Madison had officially set April 30 as the date for the Mifflin Street Block Party came as a huge relief. After months of irrational hope that students would agree to have the party May 7-the eve of the first day of final exams-city officials came to the realization that students would party April 30 whether there was a police presence or not.
The use of animals in research is a socially sensitive issue. The tension between opposing perspectives hinges on the following fact: Certain questions about human and animal health can only be answered through animal studies. No animals, no answers. In this context, “alternatives to animal studies” means asking different questions.
As a large research university, UW-Madison is a magnet for animal rights activists. And this year we have a bumper crop. They are busy dumpster diving, video taping university research facilities and doing their best to intimidate researchers and staff. They also are proving to be artful propagandists.
State employees made a little noise in town this week. Their message was a simple one: We’re tired of all the disrespect.
Government workers have always been easy targets. Because they work for the taxpayers – which, incidentally, includes themselves since they pay taxes, too – they’re subject to more scrutiny than the average worker.
The news media are constantly looking over their shoulders and are quick to point out when they mess up. And there’s a perception, often fostered by our elected officials, that they don’t work hard enough.
This month, more than a million young people will receive letters that will let them know whether they’ve been accepted to the college of their choice. If those acceptance letters are not accompanied by the right financial aid package, some young people will find themselves altering or deferring their dreams. Too many will be low-income students who find the financial aid picture more daunting than in the past.
Commentary By Julianne Malveaux
The University of Wisconsin has strengthened its role in protecting the environment to ensure that we safeguard the quality of our air, water and land for future generations, says Associate Vice Chancellor Alan Fish in an op-ed piece in the Badger Herald.
Professor Ron Daggett was a handy guy: He used to say he could mend everything except a broken heart and the crack of dawn.
Actually, he was being modest. He did mend broken hearts with his invention of one of the first plastic heart valves. And one of my favorite stories about him involves his fixing the organ at his church with a pump he “borrowed” from his wife’s vacuum cleaner.
Elected in 2002, Gov. Jim Doyle’s tenure at the helm of the Badger State has just passed the halfway point. This fact, if converted to the semester time zone in which students reside, would mean that Gov. Jim Doyle has just finished his midterm and is focusing on his final in 2006.
Anyone with a basic knowledge of politics can recognize that an issue deemed ââ?¬Å?plain and simpleââ?¬Â never actually is. For some unapparent reason, politicians remain loyal to this failed rhetorical tactic, as if its clichÃ?© justification will elicit public acceptance. However, this pathetic excuse for an explanation never works and there is no reason to think this time will be an exception as Republicans use it in an attempt to shoot down the current proposal to extend partner benefits to University of Wisconsin employees.
He was told it happened two or three years before he was born in 1978, a wretched fire in his grandparents’ Lynchburg, Va., home that killed both, plus an aunt and an uncle.
Well over 200,000 animals spend their entire lives in UW-Madison research labs. After reading recent media reports about alleged cruel and unnecessary experiments on these animals, I and several other concerned citizens have made numerous attempts to attend the federally-mandated meetings of the UW-Madison’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees.
There are six characters in the world premiere of “The End of the Affair,” being performed by Madison Opera next weekend. In one of those key roles is Thomas Moore, a European opera star who has performed all the principal opera leads from Hoffmann to Faust throughout Germany, France, Austria and elsewhere on the continent.
Moore, who plays Smythe the rationalist in this premiere, lives in Switzerland, but grew up on a farm in Middleton. He got his start here at the UW- Madison, studying under now retired music director and Prof. Karlos Moser.
Was I the only one bothered and dismayed by receiving the campus-wide “pick a prof” e-mail in my inbox?
With enrollment underway, what better way to pick a class than by peering into the future and seeing what grade might transpire? Yet, doesn’t this just put more emphasis on grades in our already grade-obsessed society?
The Mifflin Street Block Party has long served as students� last chance to let loose and enjoy the return of warm weather to Madison before the realities of final exams and summer break settle in. It�s the last hurrah for those graduating, returning home for the summer months or studying abroad for a semester or two. It serves as an opportunity for high school friends and childhood pals to gawk in awe at our university�s renowned social scene and enjoy the atmosphere of a top college town.
Picnic Point is an accessible natural area all of the campus can enjoy. On any given afternoon, students arrive at the natural area by foot, bike and boat from across University Bay. As a peninsula in a city on an isthmus, Picnic Point’s allure is its accessibility.
If a front-row seat at a human science fair won’t soften our skepticism, maybe a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor’s research will. To get a better read on Tasers, John Webster is ready to study how current enters the body, flows through it and affects muscles and the nervous system.
The room was too small. The crowd was too sparse. The applause was too light. The spotlight was too dim.
Other than that, the University of Wisconsin student-athlete academic recognition banquet, held Monday night, was a rousing success.
The U.S. Department of Justice is paying the University of Wisconsin $500,000 to put pigs under general anesthesia, inject them with cocaine and zap them with Tasers.
On Wednesday, the Campus Natural Areas Committee will hear public testimony about yet another rule: this one would ban bicycles from Picnic Point.
Bikes have been allowed on the point’s main trail on an “experimental” basis for about a decade. Retired psychiatry professor Jack Westman wants the experiment ended. He contends that bicyclists ride too fast and are likely to mow down innocent children and the elderly.
Sure, women go into the sciences, but our choices have little to do with aptitude or confidence. We’re simply choosing career paths that we see as less isolating and more helpful to society.
Following are the first two paragraphs of a story that appeared in the Washington Post only a few days ago:
“Gov. Bill Owens has been crisscrossing the country for years promoting the virtues of (Colorado’s) strict constitutional limits on government spending. He has repeatedly urged other states to adopt restrictions of their own, based on Colorado’s ‘Taxpayer Bill of Rights’ amendment, known as TABOR.
“But this summer, Owens, a Republican, says he’ll be traversing his own mountainous state pushing the opposite message.
Starting tomorrow, Badger football fans will be presented with a choice. The student ticket exchange policy will change so student fans must either turn in all tickets a week before classes start in the fall, or will have to exchange ticket vouchers at the Camp Randall gate at game time. Unfortunately, both these supposed solutions seek to change a non-existent problem and would likely only exacerbate current imperfections in the system.
A former colleague, now retired, always referred to the University of Wisconsin as a coach’s graveyard when it came to men’s basketball.
During the Dark Ages of UW hoops, which ran from 1950 to the mid-1990s, Madison was a place where coaches’ careers went to die. Few who came here to coach ever worked again – in this or any other town.
The use of Tasers by law enforcement personnel has evolved into an extremely controversial and contentious issue over the past several months. Tasers fire two small darts carrying roughly 50,000 electric volts that temporarily paralyze a recipient. While law enforcement officials, including Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, laud the Taser for its effectiveness as an alternative to using deadly firearms, groups such as Amnesty International have called for a Taser ban due to the 70 deaths related to electric shocks since 2001.
Column compiled by Megan Schliesman, a librarian at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, a noncirculating library of the School of Education at UW-Madison. The CCBC is a library for adults with an academic, professional or career interest in children’s or young adult literature.
