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(02/28/13 4:23am)
Yesterday, this page featured an opinion column by veteran contributor Steven Nemcek. Steven very carefully dissected what he saw as failures in how the concept of white privilege is defined and taught to students. I purposefully avoid reiterating his points in this rebuttal as Steven is much better at explaining his position than I am.
(01/31/13 7:48am)
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is a special place for a million reasons: top notch academics, competitive and exciting athletics, inspiring professors et cetera et cetera. One of the most important, and perhaps the most unrecognized feature that makes UW-Madison so unique is the shared governance relationship between students and administrators. In fact, Wisconsin law dictates that students must be a part of the allocation of their segregated fees. The importance of student representation in important budget and educational decisions on campus cannot be undersold. Unfortunately, the structure of our student government has become bloated and inefficient and is in desperate need of a dramatic overhaul.
(01/29/13 4:55am)
Last week, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau released an estimate of Wisconsin’s budget surplus that exceeded preliminary estimates by $137 million. Gov. Scott Walker’s administration has announced that it plans to use the extra funding in order to give a tax break to Wisconsin families in a terribly unsurprising move. Considering the extreme budget cutting techniques done in the name of state debt, a tax rebate is hardly the innovative way of building tax base that Wisconsin needs.
(01/22/13 4:29am)
Although our economy is still far from healthy and any real decisions regarding the U.S. fiscal policy have been pushed back a few months by the fiscal cliff deal, the political world has been violently derailed by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The Dec. 14 shooting left 28 dead, including 20 children, and was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since Seung-Hui Cho terrorized the Virginia Tech campus, killing 32 in 2007.
(11/16/12 7:18am)
It’s been a long week and Thursday night finally rolls around. Going out to the bars and slugging down some Glenlivet on the rocks (if you’re like me and awesome) is just about a necessity. What you don’t expect is walking back home and finding a stranger there. This crazy situation turned into a nightmare after the cops saw Paul Heenan fighting with the homeowner of the house he mistook for his own. Paul Heenan—an intoxicated new neighbor—was fatally shot by Officer Stephen Heimsness after he reported to the scene.
(09/20/12 1:59am)
The night after the Packers won the Super Bowl in 2011 my palm was burning from all the high-fives I got during and after the game. State Street was awash in Green and Gold fans celebrating in the temperate winter conditions. I remember watching the Wisconsin vs. Ohio State game where J.J. Watt and company steamrolled the No. 1 ranked Buckeyes. The city erupted, students and visitors crammed the bars and the streets until the early morning.
(09/19/12 2:57pm)
Looks like the Orpheum Theater, an icon on the 200 block of State Street, will soon be shutting its doors after being mismanaged straight into the ground. The details of the demise of the Orpheum aren’t exactly clear to me, but I know that a lost liquor license, shoddy booking and inconsistency in every other aspect of running the company surely didn’t help. This is an open letter to whoever sinks the time and money into the next iteration of the Orpheum theater, conveniently organized for you, future owners.
(09/19/12 2:56pm)
Late last week Judge Juan Colas struck down major portions of Act 10, the law that severely curtailed how public employees can collectively bargain. Judge Colas argues that the implementation of the law violates the constitutional rights of state employees, specifically the rights of free speech, association and equal representation under the law. Colas views Act 10 as illegally denying public employees the rights afforded to workers who earn their wage in the private sector.
(09/11/12 3:15am)
Earlier this summer, Wade Page opened fire at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek Wis. The first reporting officer, Lt. Brian Murphy, was shot 15 times before another officer brought Page down with a rifle shot to his mid-section. Footage from the officers’ dashboard cameras was released yesterday, allowing the curious to gain a more complete image of the grisly scene and the role the two officers played in ending the attack.
(09/07/12 5:23pm)
As students, fresh or weary from their summer breaks, walked onto Bascom Hill for their first day of classes Tuesday they were treated to a commercial and educational display on Bascom’s lawn. The display, which promoted a new grocery store in Dejope Hall, featured dozens of plastic flamingo lawn ornaments embedded all across the grassy expanse below Bascom Hall. The display itself might come off as esoteric, but is actually a call-back to the infamous Pail and Shovel student government party which ascended to power in 1978.
(09/05/12 3:09am)
(08/28/12 4:52am)
Madisonians have grown accustomed to political excitement over the past couple of years. Fall 2012 promises to be just as exciting in terms of political conflict. The items listed below are hot topics to follow as the school year starts.
(05/06/12 11:31pm)
A new report from the Brookings Institute shows public funding for clean energy has—and will continue to—plummet from a high point in 2009. Clean energy has made strides in the past few years by adding jobs in a recession and making clean technology more efficient and affordable. But a national emphasis on budget austerity will contribute to a falling rate of subsidies for clean-energy companies. The federal government needs to learn from Solyndra’s bankruptcy, which left the government on the hook for $535 million, instead of walking away from clean energy as a whole.
(04/30/12 2:29am)
Katherine Walsh is an associate professor of political science at UW-Madison. Since 2007 she has gathered information about how the state perceives the university. Walsh’s research, published in her paper “The Distance from Public Institutions of Higher Education,” has exposed a rift between Wisconsinites and the university and the university’s failure to live up to the high expectations of the Wisconsin idea. By taking an innovative approach to the problems Walsh has highlighted, Wisconsin could join the forefront of the national conversation on how to restructure higher education.
(04/23/12 12:24am)
The Multicultural Student Coalition's budget appeal was given new life by Interim Chancellor David Ward last week. MCSC's actions and Ward's decision damage campus in two different ways: Ward has unfairly stuck his thumb in the pie of segregated fees, and MCSC continues to hurt this campus' overall conversation on diversity through its general ineptitude.
(04/16/12 2:09am)
Compared to the 2009 and 2010 Mifflin Street block parties, which were hazily remembered but mostly calm affairs, last year’s celebration was out of control. Although there were fewer arrests last year than in 2010, there were more than 20 trips to detox, three injured officers, three sexual assaults and two stabbings. I love reveling alongside my fellow students but Mifflin needs to be a party where everyone can go have fun and not get stabbed, so some changes need to be made.
(03/26/12 1:25am)
People are often surprised when I tell them I am in a fraternity. I joined Delta Upsilon my freshman year and lived in the house last year, but I am no frat star. In the past two years, I’ve been to maybe three DU events, however I am close to active and inactive members. Considering I am a non-white member of an allegedly racist fraternity, I can speak to last week’s racial incident with some clarity. There are three things that I am sure of: excessively punishing DU is a mistake, disciplining the individuals involved needs to be firm and fair and DU’s proximity to the end of Frances Street is a factor that has been ignored.
(03/19/12 1:03am)
Two weeks ago, Gov. Scott Walker quietly announced the creation of a legal defense fund in response to a John Doe investigation that has resulted in the arrest of several formal Walker staff members. The probe started with allegations of misconduct among his staff while he was the Milwaukee County Executive and has since expanded to investigating his gubernatorial campaign. Because of the probe’s secrecy—hence,“John Doe”—the full extent of its inquiries aren’t known. But the charges already levied against Walker’s former staffers expose the morally vacuous environment that has followed Walker from Milwaukee to the state house.
(03/12/12 2:38am)
Invisible Children launched their Kony 2012 campaign last week, and since then it has been just about everywhere. The social media campaign almost immediately started getting coverage from media outlets. The 30-minute advertisement has done well garnering attention to its cause. But it has also inspired a surprising torrent of skepticism. Kony 2012 is drawing criticism because of several factual and social inconsistencies in the campaign, but the massive backlash to Invisible Children’s philanthropy has emotional roots.
(03/05/12 2:16am)