You might think that with 25,000 students leaving campus for summer, you’d be able to easily snag a seat in a sunburst chair on Memorial Union’s Terrace one balmy evening.
Probably not.
Saturday morning, the recent spell of springtime overcast lifted to brighten the setting for another UW-Madison graduation.
The sun, which disappeared again later in the day, assured plenty of light for photos outside the Kohl Center and a pleasant walk for those graduates descending on the arena, robes flapping in the breeze, from other parts of campus.
The UW Police Department is joining forces with Special Olympics to recycle cell phones, many of which can be refurbished and resold. The phones can be dropped off at the department’s headquarters, 1429 Monroe St., 24-7 through Jan. 31, 2006. A “Recycle for Special Olympics” box will be located in the lobby.
Special Olympics will receive a minimum of $1 to a maximum of more than $100 for every cell phone collected.
The May 8 editorial concerning the prospect of tying the two-year University of Wisconsin campuses to particular four-year campuses had some excellent ideas but was also discouraging (“Merge two campuses – if”). It brought forth that old lament of educators that young people never seem to learn from history.
This year’s Mifflin Street block party offers some lessons that should be applied to next year’s event:
� At the top of the list is the need for advance coordination with UW-Madison students.
This year Madison officials were caught unaware when the traditional day for the annual Mifflin Street party, the first Saturday in May, turned out to be the UW-Madison study day prior to final exams. Students responded by moving the party one week earlier.
The latest focus of apprehension over the headlong rush of biotechnology involves the creation of animal-human hybrids, known as chimeras. Distinguished groups of ethicists and scientists have been pondering what steps should be taken, if any, to head off the nightmarish possibility of a human brain’s becoming trapped inside an animal form, silently screaming, “Let me out,” or a human embryo’s being gestated by mice. It is fascinating – some would say terrifying – to contemplate, but these weird, far-out possibilities should not distract us from welcoming more mundane experiments with chimeras that will be needed to advance science.
MGE’s latest projects include the $180 million natural gas- fueled power plant on the UW- Madison campus. The 150- megawatt plant already is sending some electricity to the power grid, Wolter said, and will start providing steam heat and chilled-water for air conditioning to campus buildings this summer.
UW-Madison students honored their pact with the city by hitting the books Saturday instead of throwing another bash on the traditional date of the Mifflin Street block party.
“It’s a party at the library instead of at Mifflin,” said Megan Duckett, a Mifflin Street resident who was studying for finals in zoology and philosophy of environment.
While this year’s Mifflin Street block party was smaller and safer than last year’s according to officials – it drew about 20,000 people compared to 25,000 last year – the number of tickets passed out April 30 significantly exceeded totals from a year earlier.
In the week since the annual party, Madison police passed out 191 citations to 36 people carrying fines of more than $85,000. And the day of the party, police arrested 225 partiers on a total of 317 charges, most of them city ordinance violations such as underage drinking and having open intoxicants.
We hope a Middleton pharmaceutical company’s success and now sale will boost the industry in the Madison area.
What we’d hate to see is the new owner move the company’s 170 jobs — about 75 of them in Middleton — to its East Coast headquarters or elsewhere.
Much as he tries, Mustafa Gokcek can’t conceal the disappointment that’s etched in his features.
It was just a week ago today, while welcoming participants to the International Conference on Islam in Madison – a conference he helped organize – that the affable 28-year-old Turkish native and UW-Madison grad student realized he’d made an awful mistake.
Community leaders LaMarr Billups and Stephen Braunginn will receive the Urban League’s Whitney M. Young Jr. Award at the organization’s annual fundraiser, Spring Into Jazz, May 20 at Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center.
….Braunginn was the first director of multicultural affairs for the Wisconsin Alumni Association, a teacher in the Madison schools, a member of the South Madison Advisory Committee and a Dane County supervisor. Billups is a special assistant to the UW chancellor, and previously was a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold. He has been an active local volunteer, civic planner and political activist.
Residents at five Mifflin Street addresses who welcomed partiers to their homes Saturday got a less welcome visit Thursday evening from Madison police.
Sgt. Pete Schmidt said officers delivered citations to the first five of about 15 houses that will receive hefty fines connected to last weekend’s block party.
The UW Board of Regents is considering joining a coalition of Midwestern states in offering discount tuition to out-of-state residents who enroll at participating public schools. UW-Madison is not a participant.
NEW YORK ââ?¬â? It’s a simple proclamation that can bring you instantly back to the land of Oz: “As coroner, I must aver / I thoroughly examined her / And she’s not only merely dead / She’s really, most sincerely dead!”
At graduation ceremonies that are just around the corner, UW-Madison seniors may look around and wonder which of their classmates are going to make it big.
This weekend, the Wisconsin Alumni Association will honor six former Badgers who did.
Among all of the beauty on campus, the tower of coal that decorates Charter Street is extremely out of place. This lump of coal is not only a disgrace to the beauty of campus, but it is the source of some of the dirty, coal-powered energy that we use on campus.
Obviously, the university needs its electricity, I’m not going to argue that. But did you know that coal power plant pollution currently causes 448 premature deaths per year in Wisconsin, according to a study from the Clean Air Task Force? It also causes 9,340 asthma attacks and costs us millions in health co
Madison native Joy Amundson was one of four University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communications graduates to receive a distinguished service award during last weekend’s centennial festivities on campus.
UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication already has stellar credentials.
Its graduates have won nine Pulitzer Prizes, most recently Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post.
Besides working for the biggest and best newspapers, wire services and television networks in the country, its graduates also fill the ranks of so many Wisconsin newspapers, especially this one.
Dear Editor: As I finished assisting with the management of my 31st and final Mifflin Street block party, I could only smile as I realized how safe it was.
During my career, I spent 18 years responding to the event as a paramedic and have spent the last dozen years assisting law enforcement with preparing for and managing the event. …this year the Madison Fire Department experienced the least number of emergency responses on record for the party.
The reason for the safe conclusion to the party rests with the members of our law enforcement agencies…..members of the Madison Police Department, University Police and Dane County Sheriff’s Office now have crowd control well in hand, which explains why the event was run so well.
Dear Editor: Thanks to The Evjue Foundation, the charitable arm of The Capital Times, for its generous support this year of the University of Wisconsin Press. Evjue support helped us publish five books that address timely subjects important to Madison, our state and our nation.
Shortly after Carlos Santiago signed on as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee chancellor last year, he signaled that he wanted the university to become a bigger player as a public research institution.
The magazines and trade associations that rank cities for one thing or another constantly mention Madison, Wis. A visitors bureau handout lists 65 accolades from recent years, including “Best Places to Live in America” (Money magazine), “Best Walking Cities” (Prevention) and “Best College Sports Town” (Sports Illustrated).
According to America’s list makers, Madison is also one of the friendliest, best-designed, healthiest, most literate, best-wired little cities in the country, with the best biking, canoeing and hotel rooms under $125.
An 18-year-old male fell from a balcony on the 500 block of Mifflin Street Saturday night as the annual block party came to a close. Alcohol is said to be a factor in the accident, according to a police release.
The Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison worked very hard in shaping a resolution about military contractors to make it broader than just an attack on Israel, TAA officials said Friday.
They were reacting to a story in Friday’s Capital Times that said the intent of the resolution adopted on April 12, even though any mention of Israel had been removed, still obviously included Israel. The headline of the story characterized the resolution as “anti-Israel.”
….The TAA’s divestment resolution comes in the context of a nationwide campaign to push companies to stop selling Israel material that can be used against Palestinians.
UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication already has stellar credentials. Its graduates have won nine Pulitzer prizes, most recently Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post….The school’s next 100 years should be amazing and challenging in so many unpredictable ways.
David J. Ward, president of NorthStar Economics, saw the report as just one more piece of evidence that Madison’s economy is headed in the right direction. He pointed to the city’s educated work force, influx of federal research money and technology centers like the University Research Park.
The rescheduled Mifflin Street block party drew some 20,000 mostly peaceful revelers Saturday as UW-Madison students tried to get partying out of their systems a week before finals.
As of 8:15 p.m., Madison police arrested about 200 people at the annual block party, mostly for open intoxicants and underage drinking violations. One person was arrested for throwing a beer can at an officer, Madison police spokesman Mike Hanson said.
Students from UW-Madison, UW-Eau Claire, Madison Area Technical College and the University of Minnesota were arrested. Hanson said the afternoon arrest figures of about 80 people were comparable to last year’s numbers.
Last week the Associated Students of Madison came to Mayor Cieslewicz with the message that their constituents, residents of Mifflin Street, wanted to move the block party to April 30, just as representatives come to the City Council asking to pass legislation or approve projects important to the constituents of their districts. The ASM is an advocacy group, not an event organizer. The idea that ASM ought to pay for the Mifflin Street party because they campaigned for a date change is as ludicrous as the idea that the representatives should open their pockets and fork over cash for the projects they vote for.
The National Academy of Sciences’s guidelines for stem cell research should help researchers find a clear path through a minefield of controversial issues.
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said Friday that he will not attempt to charge UW-Madison’s student government for costs associated with changing the date of the Mifflin Street block party, disappointing city officials who had asked him to do so.
“Because billing (Associated Students of Madison) would be legally without foundation and ultimately futile, I have decided not to send the bill you request,” Cieslewicz wrote in response to 11 City Council members, led by District 7 Ald. Zach Brandon, who suggested the idea in a letter Tuesday.
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz is as angry today about the Halloween melee of 2004 as he was last fall, and he intends to do something about it, he told a community advisory group on Thursday.
Cieslewicz told police, merchants, students, city officials and others that in order to avoid a repeat of the disturbances that have occurred on State Street each of the last three years, the city should consider restricting access to State Street and making the celebration there a ticketed event, and possibly limiting participation to UW-Madison students.
The university’s “Campus Master Plan” released Tuesday focuses on 4 areas over a 20 year period: transportation on campus, development, utility systems and open green space. “As we develop new buildings we know that in some areas it’s going to be much more urban,” says Gary Brown, UW director of planning and landscape architecture. “Which means we need to have urban court yards and urban green spaces potentially quadrangles of space where people can gather outside in the warm months.”
Sometimes a conference is just a conference. But this weekend’s International Conference on Islam, to be held in Madison, is an important marker on the road to global peace, organizers say.
“We need more intercultural, interfaith understanding. In our society we do lack knowledge about Islam and different aspects of it,” said Mustafa Gokcek, a UW-Madison graduate student and one of the conference’s organizers.
Ã? Liquor stores won’t be encouraging revelers in the Mifflin Street block party Saturday to hang Budweiser banners and Miller Lite beads from their porches and necks.
Store owners say this year they’re heeding an appeal from police to stop offering promotional items that city officials said encouraged drinking and added a decidedly commercial flavor to a traditionally anti- establishment party. In the past, students said a separate promotion for a brand of liquor even offered party-goers free bottles of the booze they wanted to popularize.
A roommate injected heroin into a 20-year-old woman just hours before she was found dead in her apartment Tuesday morning near UW-Madison, court records allege.
Dane County Deputy Coroner Jeff Scholts said toxicology tests that would determine Sarah M. Stellner’s cause of death could take up to two months to complete. He would not speculate on whether heroin caused her death, except to say that she didn’t suffer any traumatic injury. Stellner was not a UW-Madison student.
A new west campus student union will be created and UW-Madison’s McClimon Track and Soccer Complex will be moved north to accommodate medical research buildings under a final master plan, university officials announced at a news conference today.
A 20-year-old girl died at her Langdon Street apartment Tuesday morning, marking the first lethal case in a month-long series of distressing events near campus.
Dane County coury documents show a search was carried out last week on a car that was impounded by authorities shortly after the September 2004 hit and run death of UW-Madison music faculty staff member John Gesinski.
A majority of Madison City Council members are asking the UW-Madison student government organization responsible for rescheduling the Mifflin Street block party to pay the costs of additional police service.
Eleven Madison City Council members signed a letter Tuesday requesting that the mayor’s office send Associated Students of Madison “an itemized bill for services provided, related to the cost of the Mifflin Party on April 30, 2005.”
New lakeshore dorms, a redeveloped Union South and the transformation of the east campus into an arts and humanities district bisected by a pedestrian mall top the list of changes proposed in the draft version of UW-Madison’s new campus master plan.
A blueprint for preservation and development in the next 20 years, the draft came together in the past nine months with the help of a paid consultant and some 175 meetings with campus and community groups. Public comments on the plan will be taken through the fall, when Chancellor John Wiley is expected to approve it.
The future of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s two miles of undeveloped natural areas will be the topic when a panel meets Tuesday night. The Campus Natural Areas Committee is at the start of forming a master plan that will govern the lands over the next 25 years.
The public input session will cover a wide range of issues, from invasive species to trail development, from prairie to savannah to forest, and how the university’s west campus development will affect the natural areas, said Bill Cronon, committee chairman.
Dear Editor: I believe UW-Madison’s Chancellor Wiley is mistaken in his claim that removal of ROTC from campus is illegal.
As far as I have read, to do so is not illegal, though the Solomon Amendment does call for withholding some federal funding from universities that prevent recruiting on campus.
Roughly 70 members of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Student Association were sent an e-mail of a racially derogatory nature April 18, with a rapid search of possible culprits following.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has asked the state to approve $112 million in borrowing for the potential purchase and renovation of Columbia Hospital on Milwaukee’s east side.
The West Campus Cogeneration plant at UW-Madison is scheduled to begin generating electricity next month and will boost Madison Gas & Electric’s reserve power, said spokesman Steve Kraus. Alliant Energy Corp. also is building a 300,000-megawatt natural-gas- fired facility at Sheboygan Falls, which should be finished later this summer.
U-rah-rah! UW Band Spring Concert gives 8,000 fans their money’s worth. It took over 30 years, but somebody finally managed to make UW Varsity Band director Mike Leckrone look reserved and subdued by comparison.
As always, Leckrone was the energetic master of ceremonies at Thursday’s UW Band Spring Concert at the Kohl Center. He conducted the 200-piece orchestra, he sang “Hit the Road Jack,” he told bad jokes, he did the chicken dance and he soared over the heads of the crowd on a motorcycle.
Daniel Okoli took a stroll down the lakeshore path of the UW-Madison campus Thursday and, like so many others, came under its spell.
“I’d want to live here if I were coming to the University of Wisconsin as a student,” he said. “What a wonderful place to walk, meditate and focus your mind.”
Settings and buildings were much on the mind of Okoli, a native of Nigeria with strong Midwestern ties whose appointment as university architect was announced today.
The Madison Long-Range Transportation Commission discussed further developments and recommendations for successful pedestrian, bike and motor vehicle co-existence in a meeting Thursday night.
Boy, those UW-Madison students sure stick to their guns when it comes to convincing city officials that drinking and studying just don’t mix.
But finally, those darn adults came around.
For the first time in its 35-year history, the Mifflin Street Block Party won’t be held on the first Saturday in May, which this year is the day before final exams start.
The University of Wisconsin System needs more freedom from state rules – including the ability to set its own tuition rates – if it hopes to recover from diminishing state support, according to state and national experts Tuesday at UW- Madison.
In 1970, the System made up 17 percent of the state budget and ranked fifth in the nation for the level of taxpayer support, noted Todd Berry, president of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.
Today, it’s only 7 percent of the state budget – as other needs like K-12 education and Medicaid take priority – and ranks 19th in the nation.
Facing a rally of frustrated state employees Thursday at the Capitol, the Doyle administration Tuesday called for public employee union leaders to return to bargaining over unsettled 2003-05 labor contracts for about 24,000 state workers.
Karen Timberlake, director of the Office of State Employment Relations, acknowledged the state’s position on salaries and health insurance for those workers has not changed since negotiations sputtered several months ago.
A noted Christian theologian suggested Monday in Madison that the Bush administration not only had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11., 2001, but probably helped orchestrate them.
David Ray Griffin asks the tough questions about Sept. 11, contending U.S. officials had some knowledge of what was coming and possibly orchestrated the attacks.
Griffin, whose book, “The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11,” came out a year ago, drew an enthusiastic standing ovation from the majority of the 400 or so people who packed his lecture Monday night at Bascom Hall.
While Griffin noted that his books and talks have not received attention from the mainstream media, C-SPAN had a cameraman at the event and plans to air the lecture at a future date.
A retired University of Wisconsin economics professor has filed a complaint against the university, alleging that a minority grant program illegally discriminates on the basis of race.
W. Lee Hansen filed the complaint with the Education Department Office for Civil Rights on March 10. He says the Lawton Minority Undergraduate Grant Program violates federal civil rights law.
Twenty-eight students from Wisconsin and Michigan were evacuated from a Paris hotel adjacent to one that caught fire and killed at least 20 people early Friday.
More than 50 people were injured, 11 seriously, in the blaze at the one-star Paris Opera hotel in the capital’s 9th district, a popular tourist area, fire officials said.
“We heard a lot of screams,” said Stanislas Bricage, a Frenchman evacuated from an adjacent hotel along with some of the students, who were wrapped in golden survival blankets but appeared unharmed.
Perpetual student Johnny Lechner found out he has something in common with David Letterman.
“I don’t know exactly what it is I’m doing,” Lechner told a television audience in the “Late Show with David Letterman” that aired Friday night.
“I kind of feel the same way,” Letterman quipped back.
Lechner, the 11th-year senior at UW-Whitewater whose never-ending undergraduate career attracted media attention after an article about him ran in the Wisconsin State Journal last week, flew to New York City on CBS’ tab Sunday and taped the Letterman segment Monday.
Campus police pulled the plug on an electrical generator at a campus anti-war rally that attracted about 200 students late Thursday morning. The protesters did not have a permit to hold a rally with amplification in front of Bascom Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Capt. Brian Bridges. When he began speaking with organizers during the rally, protesters chanted “Free speech! Free speech!” and began to push forward toward the microphone.
But the tensions did not erupt into violence. The protesters held the rest of the rally with megaphones and by shouting.
A handful of students with no tickets for the event but plenty of questions and complaints were Kevin Reilly’s toughest critics Wednesday at a luncheon speech for UW- Madison faculty and staff.
Things threatened to get derailed early when an organizer of the event told the students they had to give up their seats at a table near the front of the room unless they bought a lunch and put on name tags like the other attendees.
Critics of the state’s plan to replace its decade-old video and data network, BadgerNet, were surprised to hear on Tuesday that a contract with an SBC-headed alliance had already been signed.
