Category: UW-Madison Related

The venerable Pres House, which has served students on the UW-Madison campus for nearly 75 years, wants to build a new six-story housing facility. The Madison Plan Commission approved a rezoning for the project Monday night but asked that developers rework a complicated plan for complying with the city’s affordable housing law.

The 75,000-square-foot building would provide 44 housing units with 153 bedrooms and 233 total beds. Plans also call for renovation of the existing 15,000-square-foot chapel and offices.

Pres House representative Charles Oewel of CFC Corp. in Belvedere, Calif., said the final look of the project arose out of discussions with UW officials regarding redevelopment of the entire Murray Street block. He said the project was scaled down from eight stories to six stories to accommodate the UW’s wishes.

The risk of an ongoing U.S. and British military effort in Iraq is the possibility of igniting a civil war in the region, an anti-war politician from the United Kingdom told a Madison audience Sunday.

“Hanoi” Jane Fonda may have helped British Member of Parliament George Galloway fill the Wisconsin Union Theater Sunday night, but it was Galloway who kept a crowd of about 1,000 in their seats – and on their feet.

The actress, who was scheduled to introduce Galloway, was a no-show. Instead, she sent word that she was recovering from hip surgery.

British MP and anti-war activist George Galloway told a crowd of about 1,000 at the Union Theater on Sunday night that the governments of the United States and Britain had created a “swamp of hatred” among Muslims worldwide that led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and al-Qaida.

Galloway, speaking in Madison as part of his “Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington” North American tour, said that while he did not excuse the actions of terrorists – calling the Sept. 11 New York and July 7 London attacks “criminal acts of mass murder” – he believed that the past actions of the U.S. and United Kingdom toward Muslims helped motivate the attacks.

Donald Downs, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book “Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus,” spoke on Thursday to a small group of College Republicans assembled at Daniels Hall.

Madison’s effort to ensure a safer and saner Halloween bash on State Street this year includes a plan to bring the celebration to an earlier and more definite end. That’s why State Street- area bar owners should set aside their hostility toward city regulatory policies long enough to agree to close 90 minutes early on the night of the Halloween party.
The bar owners’ cooperation is important to protect the safety of people and property, including their own.

Madison has long had an unwanted reputation as the home of a massive Halloween bash, often marred by alcohol-fueled hooliganism that produces property damage and injuries. Though an early bar time for Halloween is a reasonable request, cooperation from bar owners is in doubt. In fact, this week Dane County Tavern League President Barb Mercer unequivocally rejected a request for an early closing time from Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Police Chief Noble Wray, UW- Madison Chancellor John Wiley and Associated Students of Madison Chairman Eric Varney.

Madison’s effort to ensure a safer and saner Halloween bash on State Street this year includes a plan to bring the celebration to an earlier and more definite end. That’s why State Street- area bar owners should set aside their hostility toward city regulatory policies long enough to agree to close 90 minutes early on the night of the Halloween party.
The bar owners’ cooperation is important to protect the safety of people and property, including their own.

Madison has long had an unwanted reputation as the home of a massive Halloween bash, often marred by alcohol-fueled hooliganism that produces property damage and injuries. Though an early bar time for Halloween is a reasonable request, cooperation from bar owners is in doubt. In fact, this week Dane County Tavern League President Barb Mercer unequivocally rejected a request for an early closing time from Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Police Chief Noble Wray, UW- Madison Chancellor John Wiley and Associated Students of Madison Chairman Eric Varney.

Construction and funding for various departments in the City of Madison will not cost citizens more money than in previous years as a result of Moodyââ?¬â?¢s Investor Service issuing a ââ?¬Å?AAAââ?¬Â rating to Madison Sept. 13.

Madison wants State Street- area bars to voluntarily close 90 minutes early to shorten the massive Halloween party there next month.

But bars, after being hit with legal costs for cooperating with the city on a drink specials ban and being hit with a local minimum wage, smoking ban and proposal for mandatory paid sick leave, are saying no way.

“This is not going to happen,” said Barb Mercer, president of the Dane County Tavern League. “This is an industry that has been beaten up, sat on, chewed up and spit out. I’m angry.”

The proposed keg registration ordinance for the City of Madison could gain momentum from the City of La Crosse�s approval of similar legislation last week.

The UW Board of Regents resolved to immediately investigate felony charges facing university employees at the UW System Board of Regents meeting in West Bend, Wis. Friday.

Despite some traffic difficulties, the City of Madison hosted its annual Ironman Triathalon Sept. 11 and provided a satisfactory training ground for local and nationwide competitors.

The UW Board of Regents on Friday continued a suspension on backup jobs for outside hires and approved other rules designed to tighten the use of sick days and paid leaves and to speed up the process of investigating employees charged with felonies.
“We’re not trying to keep to the status quo,” Regent Danae Davis said, “because the status quo is unacceptable.”

WEST BEND, Wis. – Starting next fall, Wisconsin residents can apply for discount tuition at 130 colleges in six Midwestern states under a plan approved by University of Wisconsin System regents.

Thousands of athletes, volunteers and spectators are expected to attend Madison’s fourth annual Ironman Wisconsin Triathalon this Sunday.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents reconvened Thursday for the first time since July to discuss a variety of matters centered on recent employment and personnel matters affecting the UW System. Those matters were addressed during the regents� Business and Finance Committee hearing.

Even as Tulane University officials try to work from here, amid the chaos, to reopen in New Orleans for the spring semester, it’s business as usual for the admissions staff, which is attempting to recruit a class for next fall.

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay opened its doors Tuesday to a more diverse student body.

UWGB enrolled 5,541, including 914 freshmen.

Some 1,092 UW System employees have backup positions with guaranteed pay, according to figures UW System president Kevin Reilly released to the state Legislature Friday, Sept. 2. The university system, which is comprised of 26 campuses, employs 33,000 people in all, meaning that about 3.3 percent of employees have such pay guarantees. According to UW System spokesperson Doug Bradley, state statute guarantees 64 percent of these backup positions.

After spending five years and $25 million on a new payroll system for the University of Wisconsin System, UW officials still face significant challenges with its development and implementation. With some state lawmakers criticizing the UW System for the expensive new payroll software and the fact that it is months past deadline, UW officials stressed its complexity and breadth made it more difficult to execute than they had first thought.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison, $1.563-billion as of August 10 (increase of $17.6-million in the last month); the goal was $1.5-billion by 2007.

This Labor Day, it is heartening to note that jobs – especially high-income jobs – are returning to Wisconsin.
Key economic sectors, including manufacturing and high-tech, are rebounding and developing. Wisconsin’s businesses, workers and government deserve credit.

The state’s July unemployment rate of 4.6 percent was better than last year’s rate of 4.8 percent and well below the national rate of 5.2 percent.

Wisconsin has to do more to invest in existing high-tech industries and attract others. While Madison, with its university and highly-educated workforce, is a natural draw for high-tech business, other areas of Wisconsin can compete through tax and other incentives.

Colleges and universities across the United States are offering admission for the fall semester to undergraduates and graduate students whose hurricane-battered campuses will remain closed for months.

I am writing in response to Mary Cruz’s Aug. 29 letter, “Students need to think about their future,” and I would like to address a few of the concerns brought up about my quote in the Aug. 23 article she cited.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has reopened its stock pavilion as a place where groups can meet and eat, four years after an E. coli outbreak at a pancake breakfast there sickened 35 people.

The Healthy Families, Healthy City Campaign is proposing a city mandate requiring paid sick leave for all employees, allowing lower-income workers the ability to visit a doctor or recover from an illness without worrying about getting fired or falling short on rent or utility bills.

With the fall semester starting in a matter of days, the University of Wisconsin announced Tuesday that the investigation into the controversy that has engulfed the school throughout the summer is complete.

A Dane County jury’s $24.3 million award in a 1999 construction accident was upheld today by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Terry Staskal, a construction worker for Kramer Brothers, was trapped for three hours and 15 minutes on June 9, 1999, by a collapse of a section of the fourth floor during construction of the University of Wisconsin Pharmacy Building.

The Dane County jury had awarded $8.8 million in compensatory damages, another $500,000 for his wife, and a $15 million punitive damages award.

An ominous tally of flooded buildings, ripped roofs, and shattered lives emerged on college and university campuses across the Gulf Coast region on Wednesday as officials began to assess the extent of the damage from Hurricane Katrina.

In New Orleans, where authorities say thousands of people may have died, no one could guess when colleges would be able to reopen. Along the coast of Mississippi, where entire communities have disappeared, the outlook was also grim.

The catchiest quote from a public meeting on paid sick leave last week in Madison helps show why city leaders should not force employers to offer the benefit.
A UW-Madison teaching assistant said the university pays him for days he misses because of illness. But the tavern where he works as a bartender at night doesn’t offer sick pay. So he stays home sick from his day job but goes to his night job because he needs the money.

A Republican lawmaker is ripping the University of Wisconsin-Madison for its plans to bring two high-profile anti-war speakers to campus.

The UW will host actress and activist Jane Fonda and British Parliament member George Galloway at the Wisconsin Union Theater on Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. Fonda is expected to give a 20-minute introduction and speak out against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. She was a prominent anti-war activist during the Vietnam years.

It was a clash between the University of Cincinnati’s biggest names: popular men’s basketball coach vs. ambitious university president.

Now that it’s over, and a $3 million buyout has been reached, two things are clear.

Bob Huggins is gone.

And Nancy Zimpher is on trial.

How many Buckys can fit on the head of a pin? Well, if it’s Nano Bucky, created in the research lab of UW-Madison chemistry professor Robert Hamers, the answer is up to 9,000. “Bucky is made from very small carbon hairs,” explained Hamers. “These nanofiber hairs are about fifty nanometers in diamater, about one one-thousandth the width of a human hair.” (Audio.)

Wisconsin lawmakers should encourage Madison’s nanotechnology industry so it can continue to attract much-needed research dollars and jobs to the state.
Madison researchers and companies are pioneering this science of building electronic circuits and devices from single atoms and molecules.

But government support hasn’t kept pace with either the industry’s successes or what the neighboring states of Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan are offering their nanotech industries.

The Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity chapter at UW- Whitewater was suspended for two years Sunday night because of out-of-control drinking last year, including a “drinking olympics,” a university official said Monday.

“Over the course of the year, there was lots of alcohol, underage drinking and sale of alcohol without a license,” said Mary Beth Mackin, assistant dean of student life. “It’s a culmination of things, of unsafe behavior and a failure to respond to the university. . . . We are incredibly concerned about safety and lack thereof, about any student getting hurt or killed.”

To see the economic power of nanotechnology, the science of the small, walk down a humdrum hallway on the third-floor of UW-Madison’s Engineering Hall.

The green floors and white- tiled walls look more like a middle school than a money- maker, but don’t be fooled. A row of four engineers’ offices holds the co-founders of two hot startup companies and the directors of two campus research centers with millions in federal money.

Alfonso Gutierrez smiles as boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese tagged with tiny chips zip around a conveyor belt and pass under a reader that instantly displays information about the product.

“It’s going fast,” said Gutierrez, who heads a new UW- Madison research lab dedicated to helping businesses deploy technology that could one day replace the bar code.

Gutierrez was referring to the speed of the conveyor belt – 600 feet a minute, the speed Wal-Mart uses in its warehouses – but he could have been talking about the rapid acceptance of radio frequency identification, a technology that can revolutionize business but also erode privacy.

In an introductory speech in Madison for anti-war British politician and author George Galloway, actress Jane Fonda will make her first public statement against the occupation of Iraq.

Fonda is scheduled to give her 20-minute introduction for Galloway, a member of Parliament, at the Wisconsin Union Theater Sunday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. She is also scheduled to speak the following night in Chicago as Galloway continues his national speaking tour.

Chris Dols, the local organizer for Galloway’s tour, said these two speeches are the only ones that Fonda will give with Galloway, who was expelled from the Labour Party after making remarks opposing the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Some University of Wisconsin campuses routinely violate a federal privacy law in asking students to disclose Social Security numbers without explaining how they will be used, according to an audit released Thursday.

Scotsman George Galloway, a member of the British Parliament best known in the U.S. for ripping into GOP Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota at a Senate hearing in May, will speak in Madison at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Wisconsin Union Theater.

“I have met with Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times that Donald Rumseld met him,” Galloway, an outspoken critic of Great Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war, told Coleman. “The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met to sell him guns.”

I remember the Sterling Hall bomb noise and my house being shaken early in the morning three miles away. I remember a phone call from my boss to help our ironworker foreman locate steel beams and timbers from our yard for temporary shoring of a sheared spandrel beam. I remember crawling through the rubble with a clip board and floor plans of the building after the FBI had cleared the site to survey the damage.

The University of Wisconsin System is finally showing it’s serious about getting to the bottom of — and hopefully putting to rest — controversy surrounding its hiring practices.
UW System President Kevin Reilly this week asked state lawmakers for a state audit of university policies. The probe should concentrate on backup jobs, paid leaves and pay for felons.

Reilly’s support for the audit is on top of the System’s own internal review, the results of which are due next month. Reilly also has suspended backup jobs for new hires.

The T-shirt is a faded lavender, well worn and three decades old. The word “Florida,” in tiny and off-white script, is nearly unreadable. Still bold is the black stenciling. “Free Karl,” it demands, and this is why the garment has survived its original owner’s changes in size, address and attitude.

The T-shirt is one artifact in “Resistance or Terrorism? The 1970 Sterling Hall Bombing,” a case exhibition that opens today at the Wisconsin Historical Museum, 30 N. Carroll St. The opening coincides with the 35th anniversary of the Sterling Hall bombing by anti-war activists.

(MADISON) The first effort to overturn Madison�s new smoking ban failed. Now, there�s another attempt to ease strict rules regulating cigarettes in taverns and restaurants.

Bar owners in particular say Madison�s two month-old smoking ban has driven away customers. Tobacco researchers want proof. David Ahrens from the UW Medical School is checking sales receipts: businesses have to turn in those numbers to the state Department of Revenue for tax purposes, but those figures won�t be out for awhile.

Next year, Madison turns 150.

Fifty or 100 years from now, what will future Madisonians want to know about how life in Mad City is lived today?

Answering that question is the impetus behind a new project sponsored by the Center for Photography at Madison. The project is being spearheaded by two local photographers, (retired UW-Madison geology professor) Carl Bowser and Jackson Tiffany.

It is unconscionable to think that a judge would give a sex offender, UW professor Roberto Coronado, only eight years for assaulting three little girls, one up to 30 times. This monster gave those children a life sentence, but he will be released early and free to follow the regular sex offender pattern.

Equally appalling is that university officials seem to be hiding under their desks waiting for it to go away. Little wonder why the Legislature wants to be involved in administering university policies.

– Francis W. Turner, Beaver Dam

….In answer to the Isthmus headline that asks: Does the UW Humanities Building deserve the city’s scorn?” we would offer a one-word response: “Yes.”

A few years back when Carlos Santiago was vying to become president of the University of New Mexico, David Gilbert, a colleague and close friend, heaped praise on Santiago. “Everything he has done to this point leads him to being president in the near future,” gushed Gilbert, then a top lobbyist at the University at Albany, where Santiago was provost. Santiago didn’t get the New Mexico gig, but he landed pretty well. He’s now the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. And Gilbert? He didn’t do badly, either. He’s a $163,320-a-year consultant to Santiago, ensconced in a UWM office that was redecorated at a cost of nearly $15,000. That’s enough to cover tuition for five in-state students at UWM for this fall semester.

Longtime readers of this column will recall that a Watertown native played a key role in the formation of Social Security.

The Associated Press carried a detailed story Friday about the involvement of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the shaping of that bill, and it noted that the key author of the Social Security legislation was Professor Edwin Witte of the UW staff. The article was written because we are approaching the 70th anniversary of that legislation. The article was accompanied by a photo which showed President Roosevelt in the middle, Arthur Altmeyer on the left, and Witte on the right. It was Altmeyer who suggested to President Roosevelt that Witte was the man for the job and ultimately worked closely with Witte in the formation of the Social Security legislation.

One letter writer says: “Had the university employees with indisputably serious and harmful criminal convictions been working in elementary or secondary education, they would have been dismissed.” Another says: “I hope that calmer heads will prevail and that any law the Legislature proposes will not discriminate against universities and their professors.

In a flash, Leo Burt � onetime altar boy, Marine reservist and college athlete � became an alleged American terrorist. Almost as quickly, he vanished.

MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin economist picked by President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration to draft a bill creating Social Security worried about asking for time off to work on it.

Two Wisconsin businesses, with the help of a UW-Madison engineering professor, are working to write a new chapter in computer recycling.

I THINK I can predict with some certainty that an exhibit set to open later this month at the Wisconsin Historical Museum on the Capitol Square will draw a lot of interest.

“Resistance or Terrorism? The 1970 Sterling Hall Bombing” opens Aug. 23 – one day before the 35th anniversary of the bombing of the Army Math Research Center on campus.

The passing years have not diminished interest in the bombing, which was meant as a protest against the U.S. military presence in Vietnam but killed a young physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht, who was working late in the building.

Madison’s cherished self-image as a bastion of liberalism may be slipping. A new study released today shows the Mad City isn’t among the top 10 most liberal cities in the country or even among the top 25.

(A spokesperson for the Berkeley-based Bay Area Center for Voting Research said) that while college towns with modest black populations – such as Madison – remain among the most liberal, “these white communities are more reminiscent of penguins clustering together around a shrinking iceberg than of a vibrant and growing political movement.”

Heeding his doctor’s advice to stay home from work during an illness should have been a no-brainer, Madison resident Russell McDaniel said. But low-wage, low-benefit workers like McDaniel find themselves in a tough spot – what’s more important, their health or two days’ pay?

McDaniel, a janitor, stayed home and suffered the financial hit.

But McDaniel and a coalition of labor, housing and religious interests on Wednesday proposed that the city of Madison intervene by requiring businesses to provide paid sick leave for employees.

A coalition of labor, housing and religious interests is launching an effort to get paid sick leave for all employees in Madison.

But some are skeptical about a law that could put a financial burden on businesses already upset about city laws for a minimum wage, smoking ban and making developers put lower- cost housing in projects.

The second quarter also marked the startup of MGE’s new cogeneration power plant on the UW-Madison campus in late April, and the company will see approximately $2.5 million in revenue that plant has already produced in the coming months.

Nobody likes parking tickets, especially state lawmakers who get to park for free on the Capitol Square. Nobody likes rude people, yet plenty of state lawmakers have sizeable tempers. And nobody wants to do something for nothing — yet that’s what at least two lawmakers want to demand.

Reps. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids, and Robin Kreibich, R-Eau Claire — acting on a laundry list of Schneider’s personal gripes against the University of Wisconsin System — are pushing a bill that would strictly and ridiculously micromanage UW campuses.

UW-Madison officials expect to know by early next week if they will be able to buy some land that two animal rights groups want for a protest building near the university’s primate research facilities.

“We’ve asked for a quick decision,” said Mark Bugher, director of University Research Park, which would use investment earnings, not state tax dollars, for the purchase. “We didn’t want (the offer) to languish.”