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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Solutions by The State News
