Students from across Wisconsin are slated to rally Friday in Madison with the hopes of breaking the silence which is too often associated with bullying in schools and universities. Participants from the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus are meeting at Library Mall at 4 p.m. before silently walking down State Street to the Capitol, where a “Break the Silence, Wisconsin” rally will begin at 5 p.m.
MADISON, Wis. — Political experts expect presidential candidates to visit Wisconsin many times during election season. Many consider Wisconsin?s colors to be green and gold, but when it comes to politics, experts say the state is purple and expect that to carry over into the 2012 presidential race. Recent political battles over collective bargaining rights, recalls and the state Supreme Court race show a deeply divided state and have thrust Wisconsin into the national spotlight.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, UW-Madison professor of political science
When UW-Madison released some emails of professor William Cronon to the state Republican Party earlier this month following a much-hyped open records request, the university withheld correspondence with students, citing federal privacy laws.
“We are excluding records involving students because they are protected under FERPA,” UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin wrote to the campus community in explaining why some of Cronon?s emails were not given to the state GOP.
NEENAH ? For more than eight hours Wednesday, about 200 Wisconsinites stood before a state finance committee at Neenah High School and lavished both praise and contempt on Gov. Scott Walker?s proposed biennial budget.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison isn?t the only state campus in need of greater flexibility to cope with $250 million in proposed spending cuts, UW System President Kevin Reilly said Wednesday.
Jordan Ellenberg, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed an interesting way to resolve the state Supreme Court election.
Flip a coin.
No, seriously.
….Union/nonunion state employees receive substantially the same wage/benefit package every two years. The exception are the highly paid UW administrators or faculty members who supposedly require ?catch-up? with peers to dissuade them from leaving.
I exist on a monthly annuity from the Wisconsin Retirement System (covers state employees, K-12 teachers and most municipal employees). Annuitants aren?t exempt from Scott Walker?s cultural and economic blitzkrieg. We know it?s only a matter of time before the GOP stormtroopers target the WRS, raid its coffers and/or privatize it!
A national debate is under way over the use of open records laws to seek documents from professors at public institutions of higher education. A Washington Post editorial last week criticized our organization, the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, suggesting that we meant to chill academic freedom through a state Freedom of Information Act request that we filed with three public universities. The evidence shows that the Post has erred, but the general rush to judgment about the use of open records laws with public universities illustrates why defending the laws remains as challenging and important as ever.
The future of UW-Madison?s authority model grows hazier as Chancellor Biddy Martin finds her brainchild gridlocked between UW System officials and the Wisconsin state Legislature. As evidenced by her e-mail sent to UW-Madison students last Thursday, Martin?s attempts to implement the New Badger Partnership?a plan to increase UW-Madison?s flexibility through the establishment of a public authority model that would break the university from the UW System?are growing increasingly desperate. Although Martin earned the support of Gov. Scott Walker in his proposed biennial budget, the idea of Wisconsin?s most prestigious and economically viable research institution stripping away from the UW System has sister universities and the Board of Regents disconcerted.
The budget plan I introduced last month makes the hard choices and in doing so makes a commitment to the future. We are finally carrying our fair share, so we don?t leave a larger problem for our children and grandchildren. [A column by Gov. Scott Walker].
The Columbia County Board of Supervisors will be invited to go on record as favoring a proposal that would keep the University of Wisconsin-Madison part of the University of Wisconsin system – and opposing Gov. Scott Walker?s proposal to put the Madison campus under a different governance system than the rest of the system?s campuses.
The Governor also mentioned the Wisconsin State Journal?s endorsement Sunday of his plan, along with UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin, to give public authority to the campus. This split from the rest of the UW-System, would provide the flexibility necessary to ensure world class research and development at the Madison campus, said Walker.
The future of UW-Madison?s authority model grows hazier as Chancellor Biddy Martin finds her brainchild gridlocked between UW System officials and the Wisconsin state Legislature. As evidenced by her e-mail sent to UW-Madison students last Thursday, Martin?s attempts to implement the New Badger Partnership?a plan to increase UW-Madison?s flexibility through the establishment of a public authority model that would break the university from the UW System?are growing increasingly desperate.
Wisconsin?s already-fraught politics got even crazier last week when a bitterly contested, high-turnout state Supreme Court election ended in a near tie. Incumbent Justice David Prosser leads challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by less than 0.5 percent, which means Kloppenburg has the right to a state-funded recount. We are probably headed toward a long, expensive, law-snarled process ? much like Florida in 2000 or the Minnesota Senate election in 2008.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin wants to see what William Cronon has been emailing about. Through an open records request, the state GOP is asking to see correspondence from Cronon, a professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, that includes the terms ?Republican,? ?Scott Walker? and ?collective bargaining,? among many other keywords and names.
(Naomi Schaefer Riley, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal, is the author of the forthcoming ?The Faculty Lounges … and Other Reasons Why You Won?t Get the College Education You Paid For.? This column appeared first in The Washington Post.)
When a little-known liberal challenged a conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, the once-sleepy race suddenly looked like a back-door way for Gov. Scott Walker?s opponents to sink his agenda.
Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer
Monday?s article on the new Union South describes it all too accurately as an opulent playground. This $95 million extravaganza was approved by a slim percentage of the student body in an election so rigged by the administration it would have made Stalin blush. UW-Madison?s potentates have decreed that Memorial Union, which already qualifies as a palace by any reasonable standard, will also be “improved” to the tune of millions.
There may well be no stupid questions. But answers? Undoubtedly. Witness the standard partisan responses Wednesday to the question burning on the lips last week of just about every journalist, pundit and activist from Kenosha to Bayfield:
Quoted: UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden
In his inaugural budget address, Gov. Scott Walker stood before a joint session of the Legislature and delivered the somber news: We?re broke.”
Too many politicians have failed to tell the truth about our financial crisis,” he said. “The facts are clear: Wisconsin is broke and it?s time to start paying our bills today so our kids are not stuck with even bigger bills tomorrow.”
Quoted: Andrew Reschovsky, a professor of public affairs and applied economics at UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs
UW-Madison needs more freedom and flexibility to remain a world-class institution of higher learning and research.Gov. Scott Walker and Chancellor Biddy Martin?s push for public authority status for the Madison campus deserves bipartisan support from the Legislature.
Gov. Scott Walker?s biennial budget proposal seeks to remove the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the rest of the UW System, establishing a separate governing board and allowing it greater flexibility in areas such as budgeting and tuition. The proposal, backed by Madison chancellor Biddy Martin, is part of Walker?s plan to cut that school?s funding by $125 million ? in addition to $125 million in cuts that would be absorbed throughout the rest of the system. [Columns by UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin, UW-Green Bay Chancellor Thomas Hardin and a historical perspective on the UW System].
Gov. Scott Walker has called the state?s current university setup a “cumbersome bureaucracy” that imposes red tape on campuses.He expressed openness to management flexibilities for all campuses, but he wants to start with the state?s flagship research university.
That proposal, called the New Badger Partnership, would make UW-Madison a public authority, which means it would no longer be attached to the state executive branch, but it would remain a public institution that would receive state funding.
GREEN BAY ? In an era of tightening budgets, an organizational battle is brewing over the structure of Wisconsin?s public university system, and it involves rival plans.
Last Thursday, Chancellor Biddy Martin sent a campus-wide email arguing that the Wisconsin Idea Partnership proposed in response to the New Badger Partnership did not go far enough in extending flexibility to this university. Martin stated she had offered a compromise, one in which Madison would still gain public authority status, with other System campuses gaining similar forms of independence. She ended the email with a call for individual students to contact their legislators and advocate for the proposal.
UW-Madison needs more freedom and flexibility to remain a world-class institution of higher learning and research.
MILWAUKEE — A student at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls has been found dead in her dorm room. A fellow student found the woman?s body Thursday morning in Prucha Hall. Her name isn?t being released until her family is notified.
Are public universities in Wisconsin public institutions or not?
One by one, they stepped up to the lectern.And one by one, they ripped Gov. Scott Walker?s proposed two-year state budget as they testified before the Legislature?s budget committee.
Gov. Scott Walker?s administration went to the state Supreme Court late Thursday afternoon in a bid to implement its controversial collective bargaining measure.
When The Capital Times reported recently that Wisconsin public employee retirements jumped 31 percent through Feb. 25 compared to the same period last year, the data did not begin to hint at the breakneck pace of a new phenomenon in the state?s public workplace.
….This is also an important time to be supportive of libraries in Wisconsin. According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Gov. Scott Walker?s proposed budget for 2011-13 includes a 10 percent cut each year in state funding for public libraries, cuts of 11.6 percent in the first year and 6.6 percent in the second year in school library funding, as well as a provision that would eliminate a requirement that local funding for public libraries be maintained, at minimum, at the average of the prior three years.
To kick off National Library Week, the UW-Madison Libraries are again hosting the Edible Book Festival on Tuesday, April 12, from 4 to 6:30 p.m. in Room 460 at Memorial Library, 728 State St.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin is asking for back-up support on the plan to split the university from the rest of the UW System. She sent a letter for faculty, staff and students encouraging them to reach out to lawmakers in support of the proposal, called the New Badger Partnership. But the co-president of the Teaching Assistants? Association — which opposes the controversial plan — questioned the chancellor?s message.
The Joint Finance Committee held a public hearing on the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point campus Thursday, and despite a smaller than expected turnout, testimony on the governor?s new budget proposal for the next biennium was filled with passion.
Public authority status is still months away for UW-Madison, but students are already thinking about how to fill their seat on the Board of Trustees.
Wisconsin residents across the state get their chance to weigh in on the Governor?s proposed state budget, starting today. The Legislature?s Joint Finance Committee will hold the first of three public hearings on the two-year state budget at the University in Stevens Point.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents met Thursday to discuss the Wisconsin Idea Partnership, a plan endorsed by 13 UW chancellors to increase flexibility for every UW System School while keeping UW-Madison within the system.
While members of the University of Wisconsin System emphasized the need for a unified voice in pursuing autonomy, officials reached little consensus on anything else in a Board of Regents meeting Thursday.
Massive crowds expected to swarm the first public hearing on Republican Gov. Scott Walker?s state budget proposal didn?t materialize Thursday, reducing the affair to another mundane legislative proceeding.
Chancellor Biddy Martin sent an email to members of the campus community on Wednesday urging those who support public authority status for UW-Madison — as outlined in Gov. Scott Walker?s 2011-13 budget proposal — to “speak out as individuals, citizens and taxpayers.”
At Monday?s UW-Madison Faculty Senate meeting at Bascom Hall, Martin said she was getting weary pressing for this proposal on her own, and asked for more backing from faculty. She added that if people on campus want no part of public authority status, they also need to let her know.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, a UW-Madison professor of political science.
Wisconsin faces a historic opportunity to evolve its support for higher education and renew the Wisconsin Idea. After more than a decade of significant cuts in state support and shifting costs to student tuition, it is apparent that the old business model for the University of Wisconsin System and its institutions is broken.
William Cronon still is struggling to make sense of the past few weeks.
?I feel like I went down a rabbit hole and I?m in Wonderland, or just a really strange world,? says the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor. In the span of 10 days last month, Cronon started a blog, penned an op-ed for the New York Times and let the world know his emails were the target of an open records request from the Republican Party of Wisconsin, a move roundly criticized as an attempt to intimidate a professor for offering his perspective on political issues.
Quoted: Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lost in the debate is that at its core, the UW System needs to be a system that includes Madison and functions as one since it represents all of the citizens of this state. Evidently, Martin doesn?t get it or just doesn?t care. In any event, her actions demonstrate one stark reality as the mess she has created is cleaned up: It?s time for her to go. [A column by former Regent David Hirsch].
Members of the University of Wisconsin and System campus community traded barbs about the possible pitfalls of the New Badger Partnership and the UW System?s Wisconsin Idea Partnership in a public forum Wednesday.
Chancellor Biddy Martin sent an e-mail Wednesday urging faculty, staff and students to openly show their support for the UW-Madison New Badger Partnership.
Chancellor Biddy Martin presented a compromise between the New Badger Partnership and the Board of Regents? Wisconsin Idea Partnership that would provide the UW System more flexibilities while maintaining public authority status for UW-Madison.
Both chambers of the Legislature, which met with all the members present for the first time in almost two months Tuesday, passed the fiscal components of Gov. Scott Walker?s budget repair bill.
After University of Wisconsin System representatives expressed support for a new plan to keep the Madison campus within the System, the UW-Madison chancellor proposed an addition to the budget bill that would provide administrative flexibilities to all campuses while maintaining the public authority status for the campus.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin is proposing a plan to give all University of Wisconsin System campuses more freedom from state regulations, but a System official said the proposal is problematic because it still calls for UW-Madison to split from the rest of the System. “At its core, it is not a compromise,” said System spokesman David Giroux. “It still results in the fracture of our unified public university system.” In a letter to members of the state Legislature?s budget committee, UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin suggests changes to statutory language in Gov. Scott Walker?s budget to give other System campuses more control over funding, setting tuition, creating personnel systems, building and purchasing. But she writes that “UW-Madison seeks to maintain its treatment in the current budget bill to become a public authority.” In Walker?s budget, UW-Madison would separate from the System, getting its own 21-member board of trustees.
Leaders at several University of Wisconsin Campuses are reacting to a proposal that would separate the Madison campus from the rest of the UW-System.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin is proposing changes to Gov. Scott Walker?s budget to give other University of Wisconsin System campuses more flexibility, while also maintaining language that would make UW-Madison a public authority.
She sent the letter to members of the state Legislature?s budget committee a day after Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, charged UW System administration and Martin to come to a compromise. They have been fighting over the future of UW-Madison within the UW System.
The administration of Gov. Scott Walker hired the 27-year-old son of a veteran lobbyist then promoted him to an $81,500-per-year job overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees, despite his having no college degree and little management experience, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday. The newspaper reports that according to Brian Deschane?s resume, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison for two years, worked for two Republican lawmakers and held part-time jobs with Wisconsin Builders Association and the Wisconsin Business Council before being hired by the state earlier this year.
Laws protecting the public?s right to know about what its government is doing are one of those rare, beautiful things about which there are few, if any, gray areas. You?re either for it or against it. Those who suggest that certain public records should be exempt from public inspection because their creators are too immersed in big ideas, too blue collar or too powerless are missing this point. Transparency in government means getting used to the fact that there will always be people who will use open records laws to harass, intimidate or simply waste your valuable time.
The administration of Gov. Scott Walker hired the 27-year-old son of a veteran lobbyist then promoted him to an $81,500-per-year job overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees, despite his having no college degree and little management experience, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before the partisan throw-down at the Capitol reached Madison?s eminent institution of higher learning. A heretofore below-the-radar UW-Madison history professor named William Cronon writes a blog post saying that ? surprise! ? political parties sometimes take their cues from ideological organizations and seek to crush their opponents.
Thousands of union supporters gathered at the Capitol Monday to continue Martin Luther King Jr.?s 1968 fight against racism and poverty in Madison in 2011.
A University of Wisconsin professor is at the “head of his profession” with expertise “recognized both in academic circles and by the social and governmental leaders of the day.” But the times in which he teaches are tumultuous; the economy is severely depressed and organized labor is an electric issue. Against that backdrop, his allegedly pro-union comments bring a public counterattack and thrust him into an unwanted spotlight.
The University of Wisconsin Teaching Assistants? Association held a brief gathering atop Bascom Hill Monday featuring two campus unions and Rev. Jesse Jackson before marching down State Street to the Capitol building where a rally commemorated Martin Luther King Jr.?s death and his fight for workers? rights.
After University of Wisconsin officials complied with an open records request from the Republican Party of Wisconsin, members of the campus community weighed in on the perceived threat to academic freedom.
