Category: UW-Madison Related

At least a dozen local businesses closed, hundreds of students stayed away from school and thousands of people rallied at the state Capitol Monday to highlight the contributions that immigrants make to the local economy and society.
The Madison event was part of a nationwide “Day Without Immigrants,” designed to pressure lawmakers to change U.S. law to provide a path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. They were urged to take the day off work and school.

MILWAUKEE – University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students have voted and they say they don’t want the school’s name changed.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison, $1.73-billion as of April 20 (increase of $74.6-million since March 3); the goal was $1.5-billion by 2007.

ANYONE WITH an interest in Madison history and a free moment on Tuesday should consider stopping at the Italian Workmen’s Club on Regent Street, where a daylong conference, “The Greenbush: Past, Present, Future,” is being held.

This free-to-the-public event is a culmination of a yearlong project on the Greenbush – the triangular neighborhood formed by Park Street, Regent Street and West Washington Avenue that was undone by “urban renewal” in the 1960s – undertaken by Mark Wagler’s fifth-grade class at Randall School, with considerable assistance from the UW’s Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, local organizations and historians including Catherine Tripalin Murray, Carol and Iza Goroff, Joe “Buffo” Cerniglia and Anne Paratore Dinsmore.

….(Gary) Tipler’s efforts toward preserving our community’s historic heritage as well as its architectural treasures will be recognized when he receives the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation Personal Advocacy Award this week.

….As a senior project at UW-Madison, Tipler wrote and produced a walking tour booklet on Williamson Street. He went on to do similar publications for the Mansion Hill and First Settlement neighborhoods.

Roberta Sladky says there was no “ah ha!” moment when she realized she’d just made a career change, one that led her this month to the director’s office at Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

Perhaps not; but Sladky’s college buddies from Chadbourne Hall at UW-Madison noticed something. At a get-together not long ago, they all remembered “how Bobbie loved that botany class!”

A UW-Madison professor dismissed earlier this month for a felony conviction collected pornographic images on his school computer for a decade, according to documents released Friday.

It’s not uncommon to hear administrators at public universities joke that their institutions once were “state supported,” then became “state assisted,” and now are merely “state located.”

The farm gate is always open at the West Madison AgriculturalResearch Station, and this Saturday people of all ages are invited to come outto Family Horticulture Day to get their hands dirty in the garden.

A steady April shower dampened, but didn’t dull, the Mifflin Street Block Party Saturday afternoon.
But the heavier, persistent rain later in the day did ensure that police had the streets clear before 7 p.m.

Assembly Speaker John Gard proclaimed in a news release that, with the passage of the Wisconsin Taxpayer Protection Amendment early Friday, Assembly Republicans had kept their promise to taxpayers. If he was able to put that news release together with a straight face, he deserves to be commended.

At best, the GOP kept only part of its promise to taxpayers to place a constitutional limit on the ability of state and local governments to spend and raise money. And it did even that in a manner that showed only disdain for voters and for the state constitution.

Transport 2020 began with representatives from Madison, Dane County, the state and UW- Madison developing a transportation plan to cope with traffic growth projections. The plan envisions a commuter rail system running from Middleton through Madison’s Isthmus to East Towne Mall, with connecting express bus service to suburban areas.

But investing more money in updating the water system will be a challenge. Madison’s water utility is entirely supported by money that comes from rate payers – homeowners, businesses and public institutions such as UW-Madison.

Key Republican senators oppose an Assembly-passed constitutional amendment to limit state government spending – opposition that will make it hard, if not impossible, for the Senate to approve it in the final week of the legislative session.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students voted overwhelmingly in favor of their hyphen, stifling an attempt to change the name of the school.

Republicans who run the Legislature have marched in step on legalizing concealed weapons, barring gay marriage and banning human cloning, but when it comes to amending the constitution to limit taxes, they are a fractious group.

Ten years ago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was taken to court by several of its law students who challenged a requirement that all students pay a fee to fund student organizations on campus.

The university said the goal of the student fee program was to expose students to a variety of opinions and activities. The law students argued that it violated their free speech by forcing them to support groups they found offensive, such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Campus Center.

The case – Southworth vs. The UW System Board of Regents – was litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 2000, the court ruled that UW-Madison’s student fee program was constitutional, but only if the money was distributed to student organizations regardless of their viewpoints.

The decision, which affected public universities across the country, is now being tested on the campus where it began.

Editor’s note: Due to a technological error, the top four paragraphs of this story did not appear when it ran in Thursday’s edition on Page A1. The story is reprinted here in its entirety.

The long-standing efforts of unions, students and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to improve the lot of limited term employees could be coming to a successful end.

A proposal to raise 400 of the 1,300 LTEs on campus to full-time status and guarantee a living wage of $10.23 an hour to all LTEs was made Thursday by the LTE collaboration committee to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley at a closed-door meeting in Bascom Hall.

The United States is emerging as the prison guard of the world, Angela Davis told a UW-Madison audience Thursday.

Between the prisoners the U.S. is holding in Iraq and Afghanistan and in secret CIA prisons, the county is promoting strategies of incarceration based on torture, said Davis, the former Black Panther Party� member who now is chair of feminist studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

The evidence of torture in military prisons only highlights what is already going on in domestic prisons, she said.

The state Assembly narrowly approved a hastily crafted, stripped-down version of a constitutional amendment to limit state spending shortly before dawn this morning after an all-night session.

The Republican-controlled Assembly voted 50-48 to approve the measure shortly after 4:30. Lawmakers struggled to keep their eyes open and several dozed in their seats. Democrats railed against Republicans for trying to pass a constitutional amendment they drafted in the wee hours without a public hearing or committee review.

Chancellor John Wiley addressed the Limited Term Employee Collaboration Committee Thursday morning, thanking them for their hard work and calling the information he has heard thus far about their upcoming proposal encouraging.

Chancellor John Wiley and other University of Wisconsin officials met with students and workers from various campus organizations Thursday morning to continue discussion on a proposal regarding university limited-term employees.

Just two weeks after announcing its first acquisition, Imago Scientific Instruments said it has raised $3.4 million of funding.

That Imago was able to pull in funding from a number of investors, none of them local, is another sign of the value being created at many of the companies that have been spun out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said John Neis, senior partner at Venture Investors, a Madison venture capital firm.

In an unprecedented move, Chancellor Carlos Santiago is moving from the official residence that comes with the top post at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and into one of Milwaukee’s priciest condominium buildings.

Santiago said in an interview Thursday that he and his wife, a professor at UWM, had purchased a condo in Kilbourn Tower, where the average unit costs $900,000. He said they would move in after commencement.

“My wife said it’s time to move out of public housing,” he said.

The state Assembly this morning called for the first constitutional limit on state spending but refused to recommend similar controls on local governments.

The Assembly voted, 50-48, to limit growth of state government’s general fund – its single biggest account, which will spend more than $19 billion this year – to 90% of the average growth in personal income over the previous three years. The general fund includes $11.8 billion in state taxes, fees, and about $6.5 billion a year in federal aid.

The longstanding efforts of unions, students and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to improve the lot of limited term employees could be coming to a successful end.

A proposal to raise 400 of the 1,300 LTEs on campus to full-time status and guarantee a living wage of $10.23 an hour to all LTEs was made today by the LTE collaboration committee to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley at a closed-door meeting in Bascom Hall.

While Wiley wouldn’t comment to the press, committee member and Dane County Board Supervisor Ashok Kumar told The Capital Times that the meeting went very well, and that Wiley seemed very receptive to the proposal.

Supporters of a plan to reconstruct the student unions have said they will aim to re-educate students about the proposal when the measure goes on the ballot this fall.

MADISON � University of Wisconsin-Whitewater demoted a longtime dean on Wednesday after an audit questioned his use of university money on language lessons, a personal cell phone and an Internet dating site.

Chancellors in the University of Wisconsin System would stop receiving $700-a-month car stipends and start leasing cars through the state Department of Administration under a recommendation by the system’s president that could cost Wisconsin taxpayers more money.

There are currently 1,783 University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni living or working in La Crosse who may have noticed over the past year the University of Wisconsin has received a considerable amount of bad press. From the UW�s reputation as the No. 1 party school to its lack of diversity, criticism of the university is the highest it�s been in recent memory.

Republican legislators who want constitutional limits on state and local spending will offer a fallback plan today – a strict cap only on state spending – if they can’t get the Assembly to also restrain municipalities and school districts.

Assembly Republicans today unveiled yet another version of a proposed constitutional amendment to limit taxes and spending as leaders acknowledged that no version has enough votes to pass.

The latest version of the so-called Taxpayers Protection Amendment was outlined this morning by Rep. Frank Lasee, R-Bellevue.

Take my money – please.

You’d think they’d find a way to spend it, but the folks at the supposedly cash-starved University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are sitting on a $1 million grant from the Indian Community School of Milwaukee.

Spending a million bucks, now that’s the type of problem most university bosses would die for.

Instead, the two sides are only now making progress in this most unusual spat over who’s going to be stuck with the 1999 grant: UWM has finally agreed to keep the loot, which was earmarked to train teachers in educating Indian students.

The University of Wisconsin�s Department of Economics now has funds to establish a new professorship thanks to a $1 million donation announced Monday.

Hoping to keep a handle on the easy flow of beer and liquor, Madison police plan to double their efforts to crack down on illegal alcohol sales at house parties during Saturday’s Mifflin Street Block Party.

Recently, and without a public hearing, the Assembly Ways and Means Committee passed on a 7-6 vote a new version of the Taxpayers Protection Amendment that would rewrite Wisconsin’s constitution to create a revenue limit restricting the amount of revenue state and local units of government can raise from taxes, fines, fees and other sources.

A program that helps breast cancer patients is giving a whole new meaning to computer support. The Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System, or CHESS for short, helps patients communicate online.It is an alternative to face-to-face support groups.
CHESS was created by UW-Madison faculty 15-years ago, before Internet as we know it now existed. Now it is getting natio

Rumors of a federal crackdown on illegal immigrants in the Madison area spun out of control Sunday, causing fear and panic in the Hispanic community and keeping many children out of school today.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said that Mario Mendoza, a Spanish-speaking aide, was preparing a statement for Spanish-language media.

“There’s no truth to the rumors,” Cieslewicz said. “People should just go about their normal daily lives.””We don’t know how it started, but it ran like wildfire in the Latino community,” said Luis Montoto, program director for La Movida radio, the area’s only Spanish-language station.

It may be a record: 109 special-interest groups have told the state Ethics Board they are lobbying on a proposal that would amend the Wisconsin Constitution to put limits on state and local government spending.

And 81 of them – including local governments, unions, health care providers, the Wisconsin Catholic Conference and AARP – are trying to kill what Republican legislators call the Taxpayer Protection Amendment.

An all-but completed agreement between Milwaukee Area Technical College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison promises to achieve at least two worthwhile objectives: making a first-class college education more affordable to local students and promoting racial diversity at Madison. The plan has only one minor shortcoming, but this is likely to be corrected soon.

As an alumnus (64, 66,70), joining other alumni in the struggle to make sense of this the very public battle on the Madison Campus, I was enriched by your editorial entitled ââ?¬Å?Vindicatedââ?¬Â in the April 18 issue of The Badger Herald.

MADISON, Wis. – The State Building Commission approved plans Wednesday for a $150 million project to build twin research institutes on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

There is now a guaranteed graduation path from MATC to UW Madison.

The University of Wisconsin and the Madison Area Technical College have formalized a transfer contract.

Chancellor Wiley questioned the entire $147,000 budget proposal of the UW Roman Catholic Foundation last week. It is only the second time in 13 years the chancellor has returned budgets to ASM for reconsideration.

student finance committee decided to fill the budget requests of six student organizations, in response to a letter from UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley asking the committee to review the budgets Monday night.

After an overwhelmingly negative faculty reaction, a proposed disciplinary process set forth by a UW System Board of Regents committee will move forward with some changes.

A special Board of Regents committee met yesterday to further discussions regarding the controversial disciplinary process slated for revision.

Four days after asking the Associated Students of Madison to reconsider its proposed 2006-07 segregated fee budget, Chancellor John Wiley got his answer Monday.

MADISON � A private research institute planned on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will allow researchers to move quickly to tackle scientific problems and give them space to turn their ideas into companies, university officials say.

Wisconsin takes pride in its University of Wisconsin System being unafraid to carve a job for itself in improving the state. That’s why the Growth Agenda introduced by UW System President Kevin Reilly has “impressive” written all across it.

APPLETON � A construction company giant will be honored at the May 12 commencement ceremonies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever be considered for an honorary degree,” said Oscar C. Boldt, chairman of the Oscar J. Boldt Construction Co. in Appleton.

MADISON, Wis. – A private research institute planned on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will allow researchers to move quickly to tackle scientific problems and give them space to turn their ideas into companies, officials sa

An appeals panel this morning repudiated a sexual harassment reprimand against Paul Barrows, saying the University of Wisconsin-Madison administration failed to provide just cause for its discipline.

The committee voted 5-0 that Peter Spear, who retired as provost in October, failed to meet all seven tests of just cause in punishing the former vice chancellor for student affairs. The tests included whether there was a fair investigation, whether the university offered proof of offense, and whether the penalty was reasonable.

The Associated Students of Madison�s Conference Committee met Thursday night to discuss a letter sent by UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley listing student organizations whose budgets need to be reviewed because they have a religious affiliation or use segregated fees to pay rent for facilities.

More than a month after receiving a $27 million budget proposal to fund various student organizations and services, Chancellor John Wiley returned the proposal to the Associated Students of Madison with numerous recommended changes.

The testimony from the Paul Barrows hearing Tuesday should have been attributed to Paula Gates, not Cynthia Hasz. The Cardinal regrets the error.

State Rep. Frank Lasee says he has submitted more than 50 questions to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau about the Taxpayer Protection Amendment approved by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee on a 7-6 vote Wednesday. Although we disagree with Lasee over whether the state needs such an amendment in the first place – he thinks the state does; we remain unconvinced – we think he’s exactly right to raise the questions.

As to the amendment on the table now, even supporters should shy away. As Lasee argues, it is too complex, too long and currently lacks sufficient input from the public and legislators. Every one of Lasee’s questions deserves an answer from the fiscal bureau. That will take time. But it is time that needs to be taken lest we risk amending the constitution in a way that will harm rather than help citizens.

A constitutional amendment that would limit state and local government limped out of a state Assembly committee Wednesday, although it was unclear whether it would pass the full Legislature and eventually go to voters.

“We need our own Jerry Frautschi. We need our own Morgridges,” Adam Smith, director of development for Porchlight Inc. said today.

Smith was invoking the brand of generosity that brought millions from Frautschi and his wife, Pleasant Rowland, for the development of the Overture Center for the Arts, and provided seed money for the newly planned Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery from UW-Madison alums John and Tashia Morgridge.

Smith was talking about the infusion of new funding that will be needed to fulfill an ambitious plan to end homelessness in Dane County by 2015.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison attorney told an appeals panel that the university has a solid case against Paul Barrows.

Nancy Lynch implored the Academic Staff Appeals Committee to uphold former Provost Peter Spear’s September reprimand of Barrows for sexual harassment against two women, which Barrows is appealing. Lynch also said Spear was right to require Barrows to swap 92 hours of sick time for vacation time.The committee heard closing arguments on Tuesday afternoon.

The five-member panel is expected to announce its decision on Friday and back it up with a written statement in May.