After I read the article ""Race deserves no place in university admissions"" in Tuesday's issue of The Daily Cardinal, I struggled with how to explain the intent of the author. I was caught wholly off-guard by the call for an end to affirmative action.
What is the true measure of quality for an undergraduate education? High faculty-student ratio, smaller classes or more spots in popular lectures? It seems that all of these characteristics could contribute to a single page called ""quality by numbers."" When evaluations of our education are reduced to a lengthy spreadsheet, a crucial qualitative aspect is neglected: What about teaching methods?
Yesterday I was embarrassingly duped, and it felt worse than getting Rick- rolled. Outside of Walgreens on State Street someone handed me a copy of Darwin's ""On the Origin of Species."" The initial act took me completely by surprise, since normally people are pedaling miniature bibles rather than books on scientifically verifiable theories of how the world actually came to be.
As a teaching assistant on campus here who daily observes the way that racism functions within the UW academic community, I wanted to write to express my extraordinary dismay at your willingness to publish Andrew Carpenter's opinion column. I am all for diversity of opinion and First Amendment rights, but one would presume that some editorial discretion would have been warranted in this particular case. To allow those opinions to be disseminated campuswide to an almost lily-white student body is, at best, counterproductive to the university's project of minority recruitment and, at worst, completely alienates minority students and grants legitimacy to divisive racist sentiments to which Madison is certainly no stranger.
Andrew Carpenter's Tuesday column, ""Race deserves no place in university admissions,"" is a poorly-argued embarrassment to the students of the UW campus. The entire piece is uncorroborated conjecture. From his opening claim that ""there are almost no students who pay any attention to race"" to his belief that ""it makes sense to expect minority students to drop out at higher rates than white students,"" Mr. Carpenter's journalistic atrocity is representative of nothing more substantive than his own speculation.
Until last Sunday, one man save Brett Favre was the most talked-about person in the state. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett kept his mouth shut about his campaign until relatively late in the 2010 gubernatorial race, yet has received more free press than either Republican candidate.
Raindrops slowly streak down the beautiful stained glass windows of a century-old Wisconsin church like tears down the cheek of a grieving widow. A funeral procession begins its slow measured march out of the church and into the nearby cemetery. A coffin is slowly lowered into a dark grave. The simple granite headstone reads: ATLAS 1848-2009.
Diversity is a recurring theme at UW-Madison and, as always, the discussion turns to race. Administrators who focus on the color of students' skin continue to find a lack of diversity, which is a nice way of saying we are too white. Responding to this crisis of superficial uniformity has been a favorite task of chancellors, committees, and columnists for decades. While the overwhelming sea of good intentions is aimed at increasing diversity, I would argue that there are almost no students who pay any attention to race.
Following The Daily Cardinal Editorial Board's recent meeting with Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, budgetary issues tended to push other topics to the back burner. One subject that we made sure to address however was the recent compromise Cieslewicz brokered with the Common Council regarding a student serving on the Alcohol License Review Committee. After convincing Ald. Bryon Eagon, Dist. 8, to remove language making the student voting member a permanent position, Cieslewicz vowed to nominate a student to the seat once two new voting members were added to the ALRC.
Oh, the Humanities Building. You are a massive block of concrete that houses the studies for which you are appropriately named. Since your completed construction in 1969, you have been a cold, lonely home to the studies of music, art, English, and history; all of which seem strangely out of place beneath your sunken temple walls (perhaps with the exclusion of history). Ever since the announcement of your imminent destruction, I have been absolutely enthralled. The Humanities Building at one time may have been a ground-breaking, conversational piece, but in today's current architectural climate it is a blotch upon our beautiful campus.
Can students access their student government's full records? You would say ""sure"" without the blink of an eye. But when reporters at UW-Milwaukee's student newspaper, The UWM Post, wanted the same information, they were only given heavily redacted materials from the university. Last week, the Post brought the matter to court after 10 months of fruitless negotiation. By resorting to legal action, its student journalists have taken a courageous step to defend their peers' rights.
The United States used to be one of the world standards for good education, but we are currently ranked 17 out of 30 for the world's richest countries in science and 24 out of 30 in mathematics by the Program for International Student Assessment. Wisconsin has the largest achievement gap in the nation in terms of disparity in the educational performances of minority and low-income students in comparison to their white, middle-class peers. This may not be the cause of widespread concern among students on this campus, yet this continued decline in educational performance will seriously hinder the United States' ability to stay on the cutting edge of technological advancement.
With the recent vote on the capital budget, numerous city projects weighed heavily on the mind of Mayor Dave Cieslewicz. In light of the flurry of civic activity, The Daily Cardinal Editorial Board sat down with Cieslewicz and discussed some of the more pressing issues facing Madison.
Late Saturday night, by a narrow vote of 220-215, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the most significant health insurance legislation since the creation of Medicare. The bill still requires Senate approval—less likely to occur—and President Obama's signature to become law.
Sex Out Loud's mission is to promote healthy sexuality through sex-positive education and activism. To effectively do this across a broad range of communities, we must be cognizant of the profound ways in which various identity markers can impact sexuality, including, but certainly not limited to, sex, gender, gender identity, race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, relationship status and religion. Working to make our events and programming more inclusive is an ever-present goal of ours, and we value the opportunity to reach out to often-marginalized groups.
Last week two facilitators and a supervisor from Sex Out Loud came to my residence hall to lead a program called ""Safer Sex."" At first, my Christian values made me a little apprehensive. However, despite my concerns I was pleased to find that the program concentrated on asking for consent, sexually transmitted diseases and preventing the dangers of sex. While I disagree with the idea that the university should be promoting promiscuous sexual behavior, I understand the importance of giving students the information they need to make their own decisions. People have the right to know how to use a condom or how likely they are to contract HIV before they make their own sexual choices.
Last Thursday, the Dane County Board voted in favor of creating a regional transit authority to preside over the planning of the public transportation system around Madison. With big projects like the new Central Library and Edgewater redevelopment looming, the RTA makes sense. It is a wonder that there was no governing body to guide the growth of the transportation system before, which probably accounts for the lack of progress in high-speed rail and bus route updates.
In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson observed the first Armistice Day, which would later become Veterans Day, by reflecting ""with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory."" Ninety years later, Americans everywhere continue to honor the service and sacrifice of our nation's veterans on Nov. 11, the anniversary of the end of World War I.
In 1999, Wisconsin finally made the fifth offense for driving while intoxicated a felony. Even with this stipulation, our state still had some of the most lax drinking laws in the country at the time. Even though the state Legislature recently tightened drunken driving laws, the latest legislation passed will do little to reduce Wisconsin's reputation as an overly alcohol-friendly state.
1st Lt. Dan Choi was notified in April of this year that the Army would begin discharge proceedings against him. Choi, an Arabic-speaking linguist, Iraq war veteran, West Point graduate and infantry officer, served in the nation's armed forces for 10 years. Now he faces an other than honorable discharge from the military because he is gay and doesn't want to lie about it.
Read on Issuu
Solutions by The State News
