Here are some questions for state legislators:
-Do you think Wisconsin would be better off if more people had college degrees? The percentage of state residents with college degrees was
25 percent in 2005. That compares to 27.7 percent nationwide. Minnesota had 34.2 percent. Could that have anything to do with the fact that Minnesota is well ahead of us in terms of income and the economy?
A disturbing, allegedly drunken burglary spree by a UW-Madison student, could affect his standing on campus.
20 year old Nathan Castner is accused of turning a night of drinking into a somewhat shocking morning of crime.
With a house full of college men hanging out upstairs in Ryan Jelinek’s apartment at 139 Langdon Street early Sunday morning just after bar time, Jelinek told 27 News a stranger snuck in downstairs and looted rooms. “He took two iPods, took a laptop (computer), he took a Play Station-2 out of another room, another iPod, he took an Xbox out of another room and a digital camera.”
Castner made an initial appearance in Dane County court on three felony charges and one misdemeanor charge.
Two years ago, Castner was a valedictorian student at Green Bay Preble High School.
Joel DeSpain, who has spent 25 years as a television reporter in Madison, in the process becoming one of the city’s best-known and well-connected journalists, is leaving WISC-TV/Channel 3 for a job as the Madison Police Department’s public information officer.
John Stier says the 2004 bans on phosphorus-based fertilizers in Madison and Dane County were “well-intentioned,” but questions whether they’ll actually do much to reduce slimy algae blooms in Madison lakes.
Stier, an associate professor in UW-Madison’s horticulture department, was among the skeptics when the bans were first proposed in 2003, having maintained that lawn runoff was a minor source of phosphorus in the lakes. And he remains a skeptic today.
MADISON, Wis. — People stealing textbooks on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and trading them in for cash is a growing problem, and an alderman is proposing an ordinance aimed at helping students.
Alderman Eli Judge said he hopes to push an ordinance through the City Council this week to address the problem.
“What it helps to do is it adds secondhand textbook dealers to a list of other vendors that requires people who are trying to sell a secondhand product, and what it does is make them show a proof of ID,” Judge said.
A member of Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation wants to reform the student loan industry. Congressman Tom Petri (R-WI) says unethical practices among lenders are a growing concern for students across the country. The Wisconsin Republican says Guarantee Loan Programs are largely to blame. That’s because banks and other financial institutions end up taking business that the federal government could already handle at a lower cost.
Dear Editor: In the short time since the Virginia Tech massacre occurred, there has been a ton of articles written, many of which have tried to blame the university for failing to prevent this from happening.
It would mean a lot to Madison area Tibetans to see their flag fly over the City-County Building during a visit by the Dalai Lama next week, said Sherab Lhatsang.
“In Tibet, if you possess a Tibetan flag or honor the Dalai Lama, you can be locked up,” Lhatsang said Wednesday.
A prominent critic of government involvement in religion is opposing a request to fly the Tibetan flag over the City-County Building to honor the visit of the Dalai Lama to Madison next week.
The Dalai Lama is a religious, not a governmental, leader, said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
“Public officials need to be very careful what precedent they set even if they have the best intentions,” Gaylor said Wednesday.
In Greek mythology, Boreas is the god of the north wind.
But at the UI, BOREAS means up to 1 million times the researching capability of a typical broadband connection.
The UI recently co-founded the new Broadband Optical Research Education and Sciences network, which will connect the UI with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Iowa State University, and the University of Minnesota.
The recently announced BOREAS-net will allow the Midwestern universities to work at a higher and more flexible capacity. It also frees schools from cable or Internet companies’ restrictions, officials said.
The University of Wisconsin recently expanded its licensing agreement with Xythos, developer of content management software, to include seven campuses. The decision was made after initial installation on the university’s Madison and Milwaukee campuses.
After Chancellor John Wiley submitted his grievances with the 2007-08 segregated fee budgets last week, members of the Associated Students of Madison met Monday to formulate a response, including standing their ground on the hotly contested off-campus rent issue.
SOMERSET –Opponents of a proposed huge biological-research facility didn’t get to meet with officials evaluating a Kentucky site for the lab, but gave them an earful nonetheless.
More than 50 people — many wearing bright yellow T-shirts that read “No Kentucky Bio Lab” — gathered yesterday near the site proposed for the lab in Pulaski County to show they oppose the proposal. They waved signs as officials drove down a narrow road to the potential lab spot, then stood in an adjacent field and yelled protests as a federal team evaluated the site.
Huge pans of scrambled eggs, piles of pancakes, platters of sausage patties and buckets of ice cream – they were enough to make people smile as they left the UW-Madison Stock Pavilion after attending Breakfast on the Farm, held Sunday morning.
Although the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance has taken the proposal out of the budget, there’s still a decent chance that faculty and staff in the University of Wisconsin System will finally get what other public employees in Wisconsin have — the right to decide whether they want to have a union.
Under current law, the faculty and staffs at UW campuses are forbidden from forming unions to bargain for pay and benefits, a law that goes back to a day when university employees were thought to be above the “common people’s” need for such blue collar institutions. Attempts to change the law have been beaten back for decades.
But times have changed, and now even the UW-Madison campus isn’t as diametrically opposed to unionization as it once was….
The University of Minnesota, Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have banded together to create the Broadband Optical Research, Education, and Sciences Network (BOREAS-Net), a high-speed optical network to share data and collaborate with other institutions.
Financial aid offices on college campuses and the companies that make student loans must keep a proper distance from one another. But on some Wisconsin campuses, the two are entangled, as reporting by the Journal Sentinel’s Megan Twohey has documented. State and federal lawmakers are reviewing the propriety of those relationships in Wisconsin and around the nation, and the result must be laws barring close ties.
The current controversy over highly profitable student loan companies also gives Congress an opportunity to look at whether the companies deserve the generous federal support they get. These firms compete with the government’s own direct-lending program, which costs taxpayers less.
The trial date for a man convicted of murdering a college student in 1980 has been pushed back.Ralph Armstrong was serving a life sentence for the murder of 19-year-old University of Wisconsin student Charise Kamps at her downtown apartment when the Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed the conviction and said he has the right to a new trial.Armstrong’s defense team maintains that DNA evidence at the crime scene didn’t belong to Armstrong.
A note alluding to a bomb threat prompted the evacuation of a residence hall on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus Wednesday afternoon.
The UW System doesn’t have a monopoly on these dubious relationships. Such ties also exist at the Milwaukee Area Technical College and the Medical College of Wisconsin. No, these ties don’t mean that the lenders weren’t chosen on the basis of cost and service to students, which MATC and other campuses say is the case. But rules should bar even the appearance of collusion.
Lawmakers must examine whether a roster of preferred lenders invites abuse. Are there other ways to steer students to the best deals? At MATC, it was disclosed, some lenders donate money for scholarships. Lawmakers should explore if there are any downsides to those arrangements.
Ed Nuttycombe’s idyllic memories of his alma mater, Virginia Tech, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, were shattered forever this week.
The longtime University of Wisconsin-Madison track-and-field coach is still in shock and disbelief over the Monday massacre that left 33 people, including the gunman, dead at the Blacksburg, Va., university.
An analysis this week showed how state agencies have fouled up more than $100 million worth of projects intended to improve their computerized data systems.
The result has been millions in cost overruns and, in some cases, service to the public that is worse than it was before.
MADISON, Wis. — More than 50 University of Wisconsin-Madison students walked out of classes Wednesday in protest of the war in Iraq and held a demonstration at the office of Sen. Herb Kohl.Many protestors said they planned to stay the night or until Kohl speaks with them in person. They are asking for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
UW-Madison engineering professor Tom Lipo was leading a conference seminar on the Virginia Tech campus while a gunman was opening fire just two buildings away.
Lipo and the other UW students and faculty at that conference are now back in Wisconsin unharmed but with vivid memories of the tragedy.
At first, Lipo says, their building was locked down following the dorm shooting that left two dead. They were told not to leave and stay away from the windows.
A University of Wisconsin-La Crosse residence hall was evacuated for about three hours Wednesday after a worker found a written bomb threat in a bathroom.
A search of Sanford Hall, 1815 Farwell St., turned up nothing suspicious, and students were allowed to return about 5:30 p.m., La Crosse police said.
The Madison City Council has elected its second most senior member, downtown Ald. Mike Verveer, as its president. Verveer, who is in his sixth term, is taking his second turn at the role.
The longest serving member of the City Council, Ald. Tim Bruer, was elected pro-tem, the second in command. Bruer is serving his 13th term representing the city’s south side.
The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh received nearly $10,000 this year from a student loan company after placing them on the universityâ??s list of preferred lenders, according to a report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Tuesday.
MADISON, Wis. — Monday’s fatal shooting at Virginia Tech is resonating on many college campuses across the nation. Among them, the tragedy is provoking questions on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus as some students and officials are now wondering about their own safety.
There will be plenty of “rapid responses” to the gun rampage on the Virginia Tech campus, which has claimed the lives of as many as 33 people — making it the deadliest school shooting incident in the history of the United States.
Do not doubt that the National Rifle Association is preparing its “this had nothing to do with guns” press release. The group has no compunctions about living up to its reputation for being beyond shame — or education — when it comes to peddling its spin on days when it would be better to simply remain silent.
Five UW-Madison engineering graduate students and three faculty members were heading home from Virginia Tech after spending part of Monday in a building adjacent to where the United States’ deadliest school shooting spree took place.
The group was attending a routine conference when a gunman opened fire in the adjacent Norris Hall.
In a voice trembling with emotion, a Hmong graduate of the Madison School District returned his diploma on Monday night to protest a School Board member’s proposal to reconsider a decision to name a new school after a Hmong military leader.
Johnny Ly, who graduated from West High School in 2003 and now majors in political science at UW-Madison, was angered that board member Carol Carstensen earlier in the day said in an e-mail that the board needs to examine claims that Gen. Vang Pao ordered summary executions and was involved in drug trafficking.
A student loan company called Education Finance Partners paid the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh nearly $10,000 this year in exchange for being placed on the university’s list of preferred lenders, the Journal Sentinel found.
The RIAA’s latest attempt to convince college students not to share music using their university connections has not gone entirely smoothly. According to the RIAA, 49% of the students who have receiving the settlement notices have settled out of court; however, some universities are refusing to forward the notices to students in the first place, so the actual percentage is lower.
The latest to resist is North Carolina State University, where Pam Gerace, director of Student Legal Services, is trying to prevent sued students’ names from being turned over to the RIAA. According to her, “the RIAA actually said they might have use for the names in the future.” To protect students from additional lawsuits from record companies or even the RIAA itself, she says the names of those sued after refusing to settle should be kept out of the suits.
University of Wisconsin System researchers are in an even better position to land federal research grants, and stimulate economic development, as the result of a new research network that is one million times the capacity of a typical home broadband connection.
An unprecedented season in terms of victories and achievements has yielded a handsome pay increase for University of Wisconsin men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan.
A network administrator at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was entitled to view the contents of a student’s computer remotely without first getting a warrant because the student posed an immediate threat to the campus network, a federal appeals court has ruled.
But college legal experts said the court’s decision, rather than limiting students’ privacy, broke new legal ground in support of it. The ruling said the student had “legitimate, objectively reasonable privacy expectations” concerning the data on his computer even though he had connected it to the university network. University policies, no matter what they say, “do not eliminate [the student’s] expectation of privacy in his computer,” the decision said.
MADISON, Wis. � Prosecutors retrying a 1980 murder cannot use the results of a DNA test because they did the testing on a key piece of evidence without notifying the defense and in the process used up the material.
Dane County Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser said the state acted in â??bad faithâ? when it went did the testing in violation of the judgeâ??s order.
Ralph Armstrong, 54, is set to be tried in June for the second time for the 1980 murder and rape of University of Wisconsin-Madison student Charise Kamps in her apartment.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The state has agreed to pay $20,000 in legal fees to lawyers for an evangelical group that the University of Wisconsin-Superior refused to recognize because it requires its leaders to be Christians.
In a settlement made public Friday, the university also agreed to reinstate the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and award it student fees for activities.
The group filed suit last year after UW-Superior turned down its request for funding and said it could not be recognized because its leaders must sign a statement saying they believe in the Bible and Jesus Christ.
While it is admirable that some people at UW-Madison are moving to make clean, renewable energy a larger source of power, more steps need to be taken to accomplish this goal.
As I listened to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper explain why he was dismissing the charges against the three Duke University LaCrosse players, I couldnâ??t help but draw parallels to what has transpired on this campus in terms of how I have been treated by Chancellor Wiley and his Executive Assistant Casey Nagy, Provosts Peter Spear and Patrick Farrell.
A Madison alderman formally filed a complaint with the Madison Ethics Board earlier this week, alleging a limited-term city clerk employee forged state campaign finance documents.
Apparently, up to $80 a month is not enough to get Capitol Square or University of Wisconsin-area parkers to get up 15 minutes early and walk an extra three blocks every weekday.
Even after every downtown state and city employee with computer access received a direct e-mail explaining that they could save that much by shifting to a nearby ramp, only nine people took the shuttle during the month of February, according to a report this week.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee business students soon will have the chance to work with the same sort of high-tech equipment used by professional traders, analysts and portfolio managers.
Thanks to a $2.5 million gift from David O. Nicholas, president and chief investment officer of Nicholas Co. Inc., the university will create a lab fitted with professional databases, streaming financial news, financial software and dual-monitor computers.
The University of Wisconsin-System’s Board of Regents is in Oshkosh today.
So, while the regents are in town, visiting the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, there are a couple of community positives and housekeeping matters to point out.
Tuition, new buildings and regional collaboration will be among the topics the University of Wisconsin system Board of Regents will discuss when they meet on the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh campus today and Friday.
The two-day meeting will include presentations about UWO campus activities and give the regents a chance to set university system policy.
After learning the director of financial aid at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sits on an advisory board of a private student loan company, some are concerned about what could be an ethical gray area.
The University of Wisconsin Roman Catholic Foundation scored another legal victory Tuesday when a federal court announced the university could not apply the UW Systemâ??s nondiscrimination policy when determining whether to fund the controversial campus organization.
MADISON– The recent resignation of University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Martha Saunders should send up a red flag with the UW-Board of Regents.
Saunders came to Whitewater at a critical time when the campus was struggling with several issues including unethical conduct on the part of top administrators.
She arrived on campus in August of 2005 to replace Jack Miller, who left to become president of Central Connecticut State University.
The odor of scandal has been emanating of late from Student Loan Xpress, which lends money to pay for college. So Jane Hogan-Clark, who directs financial aid for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is appropriately stepping down from the firm’s advisory council.
Jane Hojan-Clark, the director of financial aid at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, resigned Tuesday from the advisory board of a private loan company, saying she was “shocked” by recent disclosures of the company’s financial ties with other board members.
Retiring Madison School Board member Shwaw Vang’s eloquent speech to honor a revered Hmong leader and ally of American forces during the Vietnam War clinched a unanimous decision by board members to name Madison’s newest school General Vang Pao Elementary.
“Your vote will honor the Hmong people who were loyal allies of the United States during Vietnam and will give Hmong students and their families a sense of belonging,” Vang explained in English and in Hmong to an enthusiastic audience that included 75 to 80 members of the local Hmong community.
….Five years ago an effort to name a local park for Pao was shelved because of the controversy surrounding allegations by a University of Wisconsin professor (Alfred McCoy) and others that Pao was involved with the heroin trade during his years of work with the CIA.
State Streetâ??s scheduled facelift will have to wait one more year after business owners feared the late start of this yearâ??s project would seriously hinder sales in their most profitable season â?? when students return to campus.
The decision comes five years after a failed effort to name a Far East Side park after the general because of allegations by a UW-Madison professor that Pao was involved in drug trafficking during the Vietnam War. That controversy was not brought up in the board’s debate.
John Mulvihill, the 56-year-old man charged with breaking and entering an 1100 Mound Street residence March 28, was a lab technician in UW-Madisonâ??s zoology department and allegedly had visited websites depicting sexual fantasies involving drugging female victims, according to Madison Police Department prosecutors.
For the first time in nine years, fewer than one-half of all UW faculty have obtained new research awards to do their work, and the average award total has decreased 25 percent.
The issue is broadly called “internet neutrality.” It deals with the concern that internet service providers might someday control what their customers can do online by favoring their partners and slowing down their competitors.
Drew Petersen, legislative director at TDS in Madison, says no way.
“We want our customers to have the unique ability to choose and select where they want to go,” he said.
Hideko Mills, associate director of Campus Network Services at UW’s IT office, is concerned about the uncertain future. “A worst case scenario would be if an ISP had the kind of control that would block services or applications,” she said.
Our country sorely needs people trained in the sciences. The need is so great that weâ??re importing engineers from India and elsewhere to help fill the void.So, what is proposed by University of Wisconsin leaders? They plan to financially penalize students who want to study engineering. Absolutely brilliant!
MADISON, Wis. — A Madison Area Technical (MATC) student who was hurt after being struck by a minivan as he crossed the intersection of Park and Regent streets last month has died.
Madison police said that Lucas Peerenboom, 20, died from his injuries on Saturday night, WISC-TV reported.
After more than four decades of public service, nearly all of it in Dane County, longtime Dane County Circuit Judge Robert DeChambeau has decided to retire.
“I have mixed feelings about retiring, but it’s time,” said DeChambeau, 68. He notified Gov. Jim Doyle last week that he will step down as a full-time judge on June 1.
Dane County cultural maven Lynne Eich is more relaxed about retirement now that the county has selected UW Foundation Vice President of Development Karen Crossley as her successor.
