Renovations to UW-Madison's 143-year-old Bascom Hall, which are estimated to cost almost $54 million, have drawn criticism from politicians around Wisconsin due to the projected state deficit.
The renovations, which were approved by the UW-Madison Campus Planning Committee Dec. 6, will not begin any earlier than 2005.
The plans include restoring a dome to the top of Bascom Hall, a feature that was originally in place until it was destroyed by a 1916 fire. The cause of the fire was never found, but the entire building could have been ruined had the dome not collapsed into the water supply tank in its base, which doused the fire.
State Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Green Bay, is an opponent of the plan. According to a Dec. 19 report in the Wisconsin State Journal, Montgomery said he hoped \the UW [had] greater instructional priorities than a dome.""
Several hundred students may find themselves represented on Madison Common Council by alders for whom they could not vote.
A special election to fill the District 5 City Council seat, to which county Sup. Tom Powell, District 5, received a one-year appointment following the resignation of alder-elect Jessy Tolkan, should follow newly drawn district borders, which became effective for elections taking place after Jan. 1, 2002, according to a Wisconsin Elections Board decision Dec. 12.
Council members have expressed concerns that new district borders would leave students living in the Park and Regent streets area unrepresented, voting neither for their representative under the new borders in the past election nor the District 5 alder in the special election.
Powell, UW-Madison graduate student Wintford Thornton and Madison resident Monroe Rosner have announced their intention to run in the April special election.
A former UW-Madison professor reached an out-of-court settlement with the UW System Board of Regents after she sued the university, claiming her male counterparts were paid significantly more than she was.
The settlement of $127,500 was made Dec. 19.
Kelly Cherry, an English professor who taught writing at UW-Madison between 1977 and 1999, said in her suit that she was paid less despite being a well-known Madison poet.
According to her suit, two male English professors who were nearest to her in tenure and frequency of publication were paid $110,000 and $93,000 in the 1998-'99 school year, while Cherry received $71,000.
The university denied her allegations and planned on arguing the case in January when the suit was scheduled to go to trial.
After a misunderstanding as to which sexual assaults to publish, it was reported Dec. 25 that UW-Madison officials will adjust the statistics to show 19 on-campus assaults in 2000 rather than the two originally cited. The new figure tops that of any other Big Ten university.
The revisions will appear in this year's campus security report issued by the U.S. Department of Education.
The misunderstanding came when UW-Madison officials only reported crimes filed with campus police rather than those reported to any campus official, said David Bergeron of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Post Secondary Education, according to reports compiled by the Associated Press.
Officials said the numbers may reflect attempts to encourage victims to report such offenses.
A fire suspected to be arson spread through the lobby of the Saxony Apartments, 305 N. Frances St., causing an estimated $75,000 in damage early on the morning of Dec. 26. A resident on the seventh floor of the building pulled a fire alarm after noticing the smoke. Firefighters managed to put out the fire 15 minutes after it was reported and rescued 23 people from the building. There were no injuries.
President Bush's faith-based initiative faced its first challenge Jan. 8 when a federal court in Wisconsin declared the state cannot continue to fund Faith Works, a Milwaukee drug and alcohol treatment program, due to its Christian message.
Faith Works has received nearly $1 million from the state, including $600,000 it was granted at its 1999 inception from a federal Welfare to Work program managed by former Gov. Tommy Thompson.
Writing in her decision, Judge Barbara B. Crabb of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin said she ruled against the funding because ""religion is so integral to the Faith Works program that it is not possible to isolate it from the program as a whole.""
An armed man attacked and robbed another male walking on the Howard Temin Lakeshore Path Jan. 13 around 5 p.m. near the Social Science building, UW Police reported.
The suspect was reported to have a dark complexion, and to be between 5' 8' and 6' 0', weighing from 110 to 120 pounds.
He allegedly approached the victim from behind and struck him in the face, knocked him to the ground and consequently took some of the victim's personal items.
