Another battle over diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses has reached a fever pitch. After a long standoff with Wisconsin’s Republican-led state legislature, the University of Wisconsin agreed on Friday to freeze all new hires related to diversity, equity and inclusion in exchange for $800 million for pay raises and a new engineering building on the UW Madison campus.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Monday that Republicans “are not changing one thing” in the compromise plan the Universities of Wisconsin Regents rejected Saturday to roll back diversity efforts in exchange for staff raises and a new engineering building and other infrastructure improvements.
In an unexpected move Saturday, the board overseeing state public universities narrowly rejected a deal University of Wisconsin System leaders brokered with the state’s top Republican over campus diversity efforts.
Patrick Remington, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said the rate of underage tobacco sales is going in the wrong direction.
“It’s more than just a minimal change,” Remington said. “To me, that would be cause to certainly redouble the efforts to vendors and sellers to comply with federal law.”
In a narrow vote on Saturday, the University of Wisconsin (UW) System Board of Regents chose to reject $800 million of additional funding in exchange for keeping and expanding their diversity offices.
Universities of Wisconsin regents narrowly rejected a deal Saturday reached with Republicans that would have given employees a pay raise and paid for construction of a new engineering building in exchange for reductions in staff positions focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.
A narrowly divided UW Board of Regents on Saturday rejected an agreement between Universities of Wisconsin system President Jay Rothman and legislative Republican leaders authorizing UW system funding and pay raises in exchange for changes to universities’ diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The Board of Regents rejected a deal Saturday that would have unlocked pay raises for employees, funded UW-Madison’s new engineering building and allowed the Universities of Wisconsin to recoup the $32 million cut from its budget earlier this year.
In a deal months in the making, the University of Wisconsin system will “reimagine” its diversity efforts, restructure dozens of staff into positions serving all students and freeze the total number of diversity and administrative positions for the next three years.
In exchange, the universities would receive $800 million to give pay raises for 35,000 employees and move forward on some building projects, including a new engineering building for UW-Madison.
On the table are pay raises for 35,000 employees, a new engineering building for UW-Madison and $32 million recouped back into UW’s budget after lawmakers cut it earlier this year. Also being discussed is millions of dollars for building projects at some other campuses and a change in how the state manages money from the tuition reciprocity agreement with Minnesota that would bring more money to campuses.
Universities of Wisconsin leaders are said to be nearing a deal with Republican legislative leaders that would reclassify a third of the system’s diversity, equity and inclusion employees and put a yearslong moratorium on hiring more, in return for a new UW-Madison engineering building and moving ahead with employee pay raises already approved in the budget.
How does late adolescence impact you in your 80s? A decades-long study aims to answer that question after following thousands of students who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. We hear from Michal Engleman, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and current director of the study, on takeaways from one of the longest longitudinal studies in the country.
“There are many restrictions, where Wisconsin goes is back to where it was in June 2022, before the Dobbs decision,” said Amy Williamson, associate director of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Barry Burden, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that “just about any process is going to result in more competitive maps,” but he suggested that Democrats still face challenges in their effort to gain more control of the state Legislature.
“Although it’s a 50-50 state and Democrats do win lots of statewide races, especially in the last few years, because of the way Democratic voters are concentrated in more urban communities around the state, it’s difficult, I think, even for a neutral process, to produce a map that’s going to result in a 50-50 Legislature,” he said.
The bounds of free speech continue to challenge University of Wisconsin System campuses.
A neo-Nazi group briefly appeared on campus during a march in Madison in November. They were within their First Amendment rights, though police and UW-Madison condemned their presence.
The University of Wisconsin system supports the intent of the bill but fears it may create more administrative oversight than the policy currently in place, which already gives student media independence. UW System vice president Jeff Buhrandt suggested separating K-12 and higher education institutions into two bills.
Co-authored by State Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, represents the 7th Senate District. State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, represents the 26th Senate District.
Among the legislation signed: SB 380, which makes financial aid programs more user-friendly and lifts the $3,150 cap on the Wisconsin Grant award for Universities of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College System students.
The leader of the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate said Wednesday that lawmakers are nearing a deal that would allow for long-blocked pay raises for Universities of Wisconsin employees to take effect and for funding to be released to pay for construction of a new engineering building.
The care can also include surgery, although most providers, including UW Health in Madison, do not provide “bottom” surgeries to minors, such as vaginoplasties and phalloplasties. Those procedures are provided only to adults and require extensive psychiatric evaluation before a “letter of readiness” signed by a mental health professional can ensure a patient is considered eligible for such gender-affirming surgeries.
The “Reaching Higher for Higher Education” package, introduced by Reps. Katrina Shankland, D-Stevens Point, and Jodi Emerson, D-Eau Claire, includes 10 separate bills and includes proposals ranging from an expansion of the Tuition Promise program to all Universities of Wisconsin institutions to a plan to increase need-based financial aid for students.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said Monday that he opposes withholding the money.
The proposed legislation would allow DACA recipients in Wisconsin to obtain state-issued professional licenses and qualify to pay in-state tuition to attend University of Wisconsin System schools. It would also create a $250 nonrefundable tax credit issued every two years to help offset the $495 biennial fee DACA recipients are required to pay to renew their status.
The set of bills proposed Monday would allow DACA recipients to obtain professional licenses issued by the state, qualify for in-state tuition at campuses across the Universities of Wisconsin system and create a biennial tax credit of $250 to offset a portion of the $495 fee that recipients must pay every two years as part of their deferred action renewal grant.
Further emptying out the Mosse Humanities building by building a new music academic building and adding nearly 2,000 beds to University Housing could rank high on UW-Madison’s list of priorities for the next state budget.
The court is weighing several high-profile cases that were filed after Protasiewicz’s win in April gave liberals a majority. In addition to the redistricting challenge, the court is considering whether to hear cases seeking to overturn Wisconsin’s private school voucher program and to weaken powers the Republican-controlled Legislature have used to block pay raises for University of Wisconsin employees.
On this week’s political podcast, Milfred and Hands interview Sen. Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield, chair of the Senate Committee on Universities.
When Jeff Roznowski and Bill Monfre first joined a coalition in 2020 to advocate for a new engineering facility on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, they figured they’d work with the group only a year or two.
As students face college application deadlines, we explore a new approach to admissions being adopted by the Universities of Wisconsin. Next year, most campuses plan to start proactively informing Wisconsin high schoolers who are eligible to enroll based on their academic performance. Interview with Taylor Odle, an assistant professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ignatowski, the Institute for Reforming Government director, noted that Wisconsin is ranked No. 32 in the United States for the number of mental health professionals.
That ranking is based on 2021 data from the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a program of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Data from 2023 show that there are 420 people for every one mental health provider registered in Wisconsin. The national ratio is 340 people per one provider.
Before serving as attorney general, Schimel received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a law degree from the UW Law School. He joined the Waukesha County district attorney’s office in 1990 and was elected Waukesha County district attorney in 2006.
An increasing number of first-year UW-Madison students are qualifying for two of UW-Madison’s tuition promise programs, with Pell Pathway intended to tackle the ever-growing cost of attending the state’s largest university.
The bipartisan legislation would direct the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to establish a pilot program to research psilocybin, the primary psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms, as a treatment for PTSD in veterans aged 21 and over. The bill would also require researchers to report to the governor and the state legislature on the program’s progress and findings.
Also on this year’s list is Grace Stanke, a 21-year old nuclear engineering student—and the Miss America 2023—who wants to help America transition to zero-carbon energy and thinks nuclear is an option largely overlooked in that transition. Stanke, based in Wisconsin, uses her platform to reach all ages, from curious kindergarteners to senior citizens and politicians. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin in May, and after she spends a year touring the country as Miss America and advocating for clean energy, she has a job lined up as a nuclear fuels engineer at Constellation Energy.
To give Wisconsin veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder more options, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is working to make it easier for researchers to treat those with acute PTSD with the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms.
The bill would create a state trust fund called the “medicinal psilocybin treatment program” that would be administered by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Republicans’ only real backstop to prevent undoing of their conservative legislative and judicial accomplishments over the past 15 years is their majorities in the state Legislature,” said Barry Burden, UW-Madison politics professor and director of the Elections Research Center. “Enshrining some conservative ideas in the state Constitution is a way to protect them even if Republicans lack full control over state government.”
“We’re trying to understand how this rich data that we collected when they were younger and in middle age is influencing their memory and cognitive function now,” said Michal Engelman, a UW-Madison sociology professor who directs the study.
“There’s biological and physiological processes, but there’s also the social and economic environment,” Engelman said. “All of these things work together to shape people’s well-being through their life course.”
In a poorly ventilated room in a dairy lab on ninth floor of UW-Madison’s Animal and Dairy Sciences building, more than $1 million of research equipment sits on decades-old desks. An average-looking air purifier on the floor nearby keeps the machines running.
The state Geological and Natural History Survey researches and provides environmental data that helps inform institutional decisions that can affect our environment. We’ll talk with Sue Swanson, Wisconsin’s new state geologist who is also director of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey through University of Wisconsin-Madison, about who they work with and how their data is used.
The Evers proposal rejected by the Legislature would have spent $365 million on child care, $65 million on University of Wisconsin funding, $200 million on a new engineering building at UW-Madison and $243 million toward a 12-week family medical leave program for Wisconsin workers.
But instead of embracing Evers’ plan to put $365 million toward a pandemic-era program to support child care providers, create a state paid family and medical leave program and provide more funding for a new engineering building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Republicans opted to go in a different direction.
Evers’ proposal would have allocated $365 million in new child care funding, increased spending for the Universities of Wisconsin by $65 million, devoted $200 million to paying for a new engineering building on the UW-Madison campus, established a 12-week family medical leave program costing $243 million, and created workforce education and grant programs.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Associate Professor of Law Robert Yablon is the co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative and filed a brief with other scholars challenging the current maps. He told WPR the contiguity argument presented by Democrats is “rooted in the original meaning and practice of the Constitution.”
“And so I suppose it’s not surprising that, over time, the political sides that have argued it one way or the other have changed depending on what they viewed as their interests at the moment,” Yablon said.
It’s pretty hard to explain, isn’t it? While Wisconsin is sitting on a multibillion-dollar budget surplus, its highly regarded state university campuses are being forced to lay off faculty, cut back classes, even close some two-year campuses to balance their own budgets.
The Legislature should quickly take up and approve funding for a new engineering building on the UW-Madison campus. If the Republican-run Legislature thought AmFam Field was a good proposal for Wisconsin — and it definitely was — then get a load of this offer: a $350 million engineering building that costs the public less and delivers the state economy far more.
Legislative committees controlled by Republicans have blocked the UW system pay increases even though Evers and the full Legislature have already authorized them. The inaction came after Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said the UW system had to either eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion programs or hand over its power to create university roles to the Legislature.
Evers has since sued the Legislature over the matter, alleging in a lawsuit filed directly with the liberal-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court that Republicans are violating the Constitution’s separation of powers by allowing legislative committees to “impede, usurp, or obstruct basic executive branch functions.”
Despite pressure from business leaders from across the state, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos this week held firm on the Legislature’s decision to withhold state funding for a new engineering building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The bill would create a pilot project in collaboration with researchers at UW-Madison to explore the medicinal benefits of psilocybin to treat PTSD among a select group of veterans. Program participants would need to be military veterans ages 21 and older, who are not members of law enforcement and who have been diagnosed with treatment-resistant PTSD.
The Republican war on diversity, equity and inclusion could cost Wisconsin hundreds of engineers.
The GOP-controlled Legislature declined to fund a new engineering building for the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of the state budget. The project would expand enrollment in the engineering college.
At a press conference, Vos said he would move forward with engineering hall plans if he got an agreement on DEI programs and greater authority over UW System positions.
In June, the Wisconsin Legislature approved pay increases for the 34,000 employees of the Universities of Wisconsin. Months later, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said legislators wouldn’t give final approval for the pay raises until the university system eliminates 188 positions — all the university system’s jobs Vos claims are dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. Last month, a GOP-controlled committee affirmed the decision: The approved raises would go to all state employees except those who work within the university system.
In response, Gov. Tony Evers sued the Legislature, calling the move an unconstitutional “legislative veto.”
Dane County is home to more than 170 dairy farms, according to state records. It’s unknown how many provide housing to workers, but a recent statewide study on immigrant dairy workers by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers found that close to three-quarters of surveyed workers lived in employer-provided housing, typically on the farm
Social scientists, including Thomas Heberlein of the University of Wisconsin (now professor emeritus of community and environmental sociology), have been examining and documenting a decline in hunting in the U.S. for decades.
The rate of decline in gun deer hunting was predicted 16 years ago by a team of University of Wisconsin and Department of Natural Resources researchers.
The researchers, Richelle Winkler and Jennifer Huck of UW’s Applied Population Lab in Madison and Keith Warnke of the DNR, released a draft of their study in 2007 titled “Deer Hunter Demography: Age, Period, and Cohort Analysis of Trends in Hunter Participation in Wisconsin.“
University leaders have been pushing for a new facility to replace the aging and space-constrained Engineering Hall, arguing a larger building is needed to address the state’s workforce needs.
Evers had called on the Legislature to pass a package that included $365 million in new child care funding; a $65 million boost in University of Wisconsin funding; $200 million to pay for a new engineering building at UW-Madison; $243 million to create a new 12-week family medical leave program for Wisconsin workers and millions more for workforce education and grant programs.
The University of Wisconsin system is ending a policy requiring schools to consult with students when seeking to raise tuition for specific programs.
The Regents unanimously approved the policy change at a board meeting Thursday.
Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder could have access to medicinal psilocybin treatment under a bipartisan bill.
The proposal would create a pilot program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison run in collaboration with the university’s Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances and its School of Pharmacy. Veterans age 21 and older suffering from treatment-resistant PTSD would be eligible to participate as long as they are not currently serving as law enforcement officers.
If a tenant were to receive a second five-day eviction notice for nonpayment of rent within the same leasing year, then a landlord can give a no-cure notice, but the resident must be given 14 days to vacate, according to Sophie Crispin, director of the Eviction Defense Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
UW-Madison would launch a study of the effects of psychoactive mushrooms on Wisconsin veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder under a bipartisan bill that circulated Thursday.
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is considering discontinuing some programs, citing shifting student demands and budget constraints.
It’s the latest in a series of budget cutting moves by state colleges, and comes as the school said it’s the fastest-growing university in the state.
