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.
Thinking did not go dormant inside the East High School greenhouse this winter.
Overlooking bare-branched trees etched on a landscape hinting at spring and the bustle of East Washington traffic, a working garden thrives. Extending from the school’s brick exterior and enclosed by tall, sloping windows, tiers of plants reach out to grab all the energy they can as the low-light days get a little brighter.
Since 1977, when Mary Klecker, the East High agriculture teacher, formed a horticulture class, this greenhouse has been a focal point of the Madison public schools’ only agriculture sciences program.
Nanoscale objects are much too small for us to see them. So, according to educators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, nanotechnology is a research field where blind students and sighted ones are equal.
A Lincoln High School Class of 1955 graduate, Bruce Ellig will receive the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Businessâ??s Distinguished Business Alumnus Award at a dinner Friday night in New York City at the New York Athletic Club.
Eli Judge is running for city council but the University of Wisconsin-Madison residence halls and fraternities heâ??d represent will be mostly empty on election day.
Thatâ??s because, for the first time in recent memory, the April 3 spring election coincides with UW-Madison spring break. Thatâ??s forced Judge, a sophomore, to knock on doors for weeks urging students to vote early.
It seems the real issue is one of jealousy
I’m so tired of reading about people having an issue with what has been labeled the evil sick day perk – in which unused sick leave can be converted into health insurance at retirement. What is the big deal here?
LaMarr Billups, senior special assistant to the chancellor at UW-Madison, is leaving the university for a position at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
LaMarr Billups has had a great ride in Madison, but he’s on his way to Washington, D.C., to a post at another major university.
Billups, 54, has been the UW-Madison’s director of community relations for 11 years and has served as a special assistant to two chancellors. In mid-May, he will become vice president for business policy planning at Georgetown University, providing leadership on a variety of labor-related issues.
He is well known locally as the university’s representative on city and county committees and as a board member of several prominent organizations.
MADISON, Wis. — A senior special assistant to the chancellor and director of community relations at University of Wisconsin-Madison announced he is leaving.
LaMarr Billups will become the assistant vice president for business policy planning at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Lauren Woods, 22, and Eli Judge, 19, are competing to replace Alder Austin King when he steps aside from the Madison Common Council in April. Woods is a senior from Chicago. Judge is a sophomore, also from Chicago. They are running for the open seat from downtown Madison’s District 8.
The Greenbush neighborhood is more than a century old.
The “Bush” encompassed a triangle of streets on Madison’s near westside including Washington and Park to Regent Street.
The first Italian immigrant settled there in 1905. But, the “Bush” was also home to Jews and African Americans.
LaMarr Billups, senior special assistant to the chancellor at the UW-Madison, is leaving for a position at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He has been the director of community relations for the University of Wisconsin for 11 years, and has served as a liaison to the city of Madison and several local organizations.
Billups will begin his new post as assistant vice president for business policy planning at Georgetown in mid-May, providing leadership and expertise on labor-related issues.
