Snowpocalypse '09

Technically it's still autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere, so yesterday's blizzard that dumped something like 18 inches of snow on my fair city could be considered a late fall storm. Which is weird, but hey, this is Wisconsin.

I woke up yesterday morning to a back door that wouldn't open more than a few inches due to a drift but also the happy news that my place of employment had decided to shutter its doors for the day. Others were not so lucky. The neighborhood was filled with the sounds of neighbors shoveling and snowblowing their way out of the massive piles of snow. I was grateful to spend the morning indoors doing various chores and taking it easy. I even ventured out once to take pictures of the muted world.

But alack, it was not meant to last. My dear sister needed to be at work that afternoon and, being that she normally bikes in, I volunteered to drive her there lest she be buried by a passing plow. She has terrible luck with the things. When she lived in Chicago, a city plow once rammed the car in front of hers and literally pushed it onto her roof (thankfully while she was not in it). So we can't take any chances now.

To accomplish that goal, however, I needed to dig out a car. Back-breaking and obnoxious as the work was, I had help from two kindly friends and the silver lining of it not being crazy cold out (yet--today is another matter entirely). And the whole of the 'hood seemed to be alive with people. It was the rare winter occasion for residents to meet each other in the streets for a chat. Dogs played in snow piles, children built forts, and some folks could be seeing skiing down the middle of the street. It was strangely idyllic.

I got sis to work safe and sound and decided to head down to campus for a planned snowball fight on Bascom Hill, thinking I would document it for posterity. You can read my write-up of the event over at Dane101 and check out the video I took of the shenanigans. Or watch it below:



It was a trip. I'm just glad I managed to get out without taking a snowball to the eyeball.

Now there just remains the actual winter to get through. I'm determined to be as active as the weather allows--get back to snowboarding and sledding, and break out the snowshoes again. But I think we're good on the snow count for awhile, don't you?

Taking sexual assault more seriously

Last week, the Badger Herald (one of two student dailies in Madison) reported on a young woman who was allegedly raped last October while attending a party at a local fraternity. You can read the article here, and the accompanying transcript of the interview with the woman here.

The story itself is horrifying: The young woman went to a party, blacked out, and woke up the next morning partially undressed and lying in a strange bedroom. Tests performed at the hospital after the fact show that she was likely raped by several men, and though she has since filed a formal complaint with police and an investigation is ongoing, there hasn't been so much as a peep from the frat involved.

But scroll down into the comments section of that original article for the massive insult to this already terrible injury. While a good few people chime in with words of support and reason, all too many (mostly anonymous) start in with the victim blaming.

(There's more commentary over at the Critical Badger's blog, too, including some further insight into the Greek system's private governing board, etc.)

For all our society's progress in dealing with sexual assault, incidents like this make it all too painfully clear what a long way we've still to go.

There is legitimate concern that this story will automatically paint every member of the fraternity as a potential rapist. As a few, refreshingly logical comments have already pointed out, it's of the utmost importance in cases like these to let the investigation play out so that the guilty parties can be properly brought to justice and those who've done nothing wrong don't get their names dragged through the mud along the way. Throwing bricks through frat windows doesn't help, either (though I certainly understand the impulse).

But, with apologies to all perfectly nice and moral members of the Greek system, our main concern in this sort of situation should be for the person making the allegations--not for the frat. Journalists and law enforcement should certainly do their best to keep the story from getting away from them and tarnishing the names of the innocent, but our primary concern should be support for the victim.

You always believe someone when they tell you they were raped. If the facts later turn out to prove something to the contrary, you deal with that then. Up front, it is incredibly important, as a friend or just someone in the community, not to cast aspersions and doubt upon the person who has had to come forward to tell a deeply personal and awful story. Statistically, only a very small percentage of those who experience sexual assault ever come forward and/or press charges. A major part of the reason for that is the social stigma they then are usually forced to deal with: people calling them liars, accusing them of trying to smear the "good names" of friends and family (because attackers are more likely to be someone you know), claiming that by being in a certain house at a certain time or drinking alcohol or wearing revealing clothing means they were just "asking for it."

As though somehow, some way, this was at least partially their fault and they should just shut up and move on.

Bull. Shit.

The only person who deserves blame in situations like these is the perpetrator. No one forced them to commit the crime. Too often, however, our society plays it off as drunken hijinks or "boys being boys" (which, quite frankly, I would be insulted by if I were a guy--insinuating that I had no control over myself).

It hasn't helped that the UW Dean of Students, Lori Berquam, apparently dropped the ball when contacted by the victim. She is now trying to make up for that by holding a forum on sexual assault--which is good--but I'm a bit suspicious of anyone who would say that "We do take [vandalism] very seriously, the same way we take sexual assault seriously." Which one of these is not like the other?

I don't doubt her sincerity in saying that sexual assault should not be tolerated, and in wanting to help provide support for those who've been affected. What I do doubt is a real understanding of what victims often go through, and what they need in the aftermath. My own alma mater had serious problems dealing with this very issue, as they were seemingly more concerned with the appearance of being pro-active than actually being pro-active. Cases involving students from prominent, wealthy families were swept under the rug. And those that did go public were often dealt with incompentently and slowly (for instance: the perpetrator of one sexual assault was allowed to continue living in the same dorm as the victim for months after the case was reported).

Certainly, it's no easy thing for anyone to deal with sexual assault. But we must all keep in mind that the person having the hardest time with it all is the person who was attacked. Taking care of them should be our number one priority, right next to finding the individual(s) responsible and making sure they spend a hefty amount of time behind bars.

The death of the landline

I'm really not sure how I feel about this:

MADISON, Wis. -- The dormitories on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will soon be following the trend of other college campuses around the state in ditching their landline phones.

After an extensive two years of surveying students on their phone usage habits, university officials said that the $400,000 a year to operate the phones isn't necessary. They said that about 98 percent of students rely on their cell phone instead of their free dorm phone.

Paul Evans, director of UW Student Housing, said that the decision was a common-sense choice given students' behavior."It really wasn't a way that we were able to get a hold of students," he said. "We would have to look up their number and half the time, the phone wasn't plugged in. So it became very obvious that it wasn't the phone that students were using."

The school will provide one landline phone per floor for free. Students wishing to have their own private landline may request one to be installed, but they'll have to pay for it themselves.

With all of the recent conflicting information that's been coming out about the reliability of cell phones when it comes to 911 calls, I'm not so sure this is the best idea ever. I do understand the need to cut costs (especially with a legislature that's so unfriendly to funding the universities), but this particular move makes me really uncomfortable.

On an almost completely unrelated note, tomorrow morning I will have the distinct pleasure (and near debilitating nervousness) of chatting with Lee Rayburn over at the Mic, 92.1 FM in Madison for a bit that, I assume, will be aired Thursday morning on his show. I'll know for sure tomorrow and post the definite airtime for anyone who's morbidly curious as to what, exactly, I have to contribute to an otherwise perfectly good radio program.

No big deal until it's a big deal

This is becoming a tired pattern: newspaper runs a story mentioning a subject controversial to some, those some become enraged that the subject is mentioned, others tell them to settle down, they retaliate by claiming their anger has nothing to do with the subject itself, but rather with the newspaper's insistence on even mentioning it.

Case-and-point: The Cap Times runs a story about recently selected UW chancellor Biddy Martin that mentions her being the first openly gay chancellor at the university. This isn't the first or only story run on her selection, rather just one of many, and it happens to focus on this particular element and how it relates to the UW's current lack of domestic partnership benefits. Martin has expressed her intention to support efforts to change that. Simple enough.

But of course, certain folks take umbrage with the article and its focus, claiming that Martin's sexuality has no relevance and shouldn't be mentioned, ever, at all. Apparently it gets their undies in a bunch.

Dave Blaska, scourge of the Isthmus Daily Page, laments that:

But is that the essence of Biddy Martin, her sexual proclivities? Why would a major university hire someone for that reason? (Or, for that matter, not hire?) Would not a more enlightened policy — a John Patrick Hunter policy — be (cue "Anchors Away") "Don't ask, don't tell"?

Quality. Now that it's a generally accepted no-no to be a bigot, bigots have turned to round-about ways of expressing their disdain for all that is different: ignoring it. Plugging their ears and singing "la la la I can't heeeear yoooou" and claiming that it's "no big deal." That is, until someone has the gall to mention it, and then all bets are off as to civility and rationality.

Well, they're right on one count: a person's sexuality shouldn't be a big deal and it shouldn't have anything to do with how we judge their character, qualifications for a job, or anything else. They're as wrong as the military when it comes to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" though. Straight people mentioning their straightness doesn't seem to piss them off, so why should a gay person mentioning that they're gay?

We're also early enough in the game (sadly) that it remains noteworthy when the first of a traditionally marginalized and/or discriminated against group gains prominence or major achievement. The fact that, for instance, Barack Obama is the first major black candidate for the highest office in the land is noteworthy. We shouldn't elect him or not elect him based on that fact, but how on Earth are you going to ignore what is such a major milestone? Ignoring that fact, and the fact of the first openly gay UW chancellor, is akin to ignoring and/or denying the monumental hurdles they've had to overcome on their way to these positions. Hurdles that our society has, for far too long and even still to this day, placed merrily in their way.

And yet, and yet. The webmaster at TCT had to disable the comments section that accompanied the article about Martin and domestic partnership benefits because they became so vitriolic, so caustic that it did nothing to foster debate, only anger and hatred. That's a crying shame, but at least we're reminded that these types of attitudes still exist, and that there's still much to be done in the way of education and activism before we can call ourselves a truly enlightened and egalitarian society.

Carolyn "Biddy" Martin, next chancellor of UW-M

It's all but official at this point: now-former provost of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, Carolyn "Biddy" Martin has been selected as the new chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From all accounts, she seems well-qualified for the role, and I am optimistic about her tenure.

Martin, 57, is familiar with UW-Madison. She was a lecturer at the university in the early 1980s and earned her doctorate in German literature from the school in 1985.

...

Martin has spent more than 20 years at Cornell and has been at her current post of provost -- the university's chief academic officer and chief operating officer -- since 2000. As provost, Martin helped raise $110 million for a life science building, developed a program to make financial aid available to students and put together a retention plan for faculty -- something which currently is an issue at UW-Madison due to its relatively low pay scale for professors, at least when compared to peer institutions.

In relation to that last point, Martin, too, will be dealing with that low pay scale. While she'll be making more than former chancellor Wiley--he made $327,000 a year and her pay range has been set at $370,000 to $452,000--this will actually be a pay cut from what she made at Cornell. Not to read too much into it, but this strikes me as a good sign that Martin took the job because she wanted it and thinks she can make a positive difference, rather than because of money.

I'm also encouraged by her history of fundraising and scholarship programs at Cornell. She has stated a desire to "build a strong relationship[s] with members of the legislature, and to sell to leaders how important UW-Madison is to the state's economic, political, social and cultural well being." With the current legislature, this will surely be an uphill battle, but one well forth the fight. Proper funding of the university system, and making sure it's accessible to all students who are interested and qualified, is crucial not just for saving face but too because it helps lead to better lives, a better workforce, and a better environment overall state-wide. Education is and should remain a top priority for any community or society.

In addition, Martin also plans to advocate for and support efforts to secure domestic partnership benefits for UW faculty. Sadly, the UW is the only Big Ten school that doesn't currently offer them, and that's both bad for retention and recruitment, and just poor policy for a school and city that prides itself on being forward-thinking and egalitarian.

Martin's hire won't be official until the Board of Regents meets in early June. After that, only time will tell what her tenure at the school will mean for students, faculty and alumni.

Easier every day to eat local

This is so cool.

Four geography students at the UW-Madison have created an interactive map of local food sources (within 100 miles of Madison), including farms, co-ops and markets. It's still in beta mode, which means it's not quite done, but what they've got so far is quite impressive and pretty slick.

Check out the "100 Mile Diet Map" here.

I love stuff like this. Easy to use and pretty thorough, it makes the task of getting more of what you eat from local sources so much simpler. And frankly, if we hope to get more people on board with the local food movement, the easier it's made the better.

A few other local food resources:

• Wisconsin Local Food
  
• Slow Food Wisconsin
• Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge
• Eat Wild (national resource with many WI farms)
• Wisconsin's Farm Fresh Atlas
• Home Grown Wisconsin (sustainable growers serving restaurants)
• Savor Wisconsin

It is possible to get most of your food from more local producers, and with world food prices being what they are, we should be doing our best to encourage people and governments to get more of their food from nearby sources. It cuts the cost of transporting it, helps support local economies, lowers the demand for fuel, and helps with sustainability issues. Will it fix everything overnight? Probably not, but all signs point to it being the healthier, longer-term solution.

Packin' heat on campus

A somber anniversary has just passed, and it has everyone talking about gun control. I have no personal interest in using a national tragedy as a platform for my own political views. What I can't help but respond to, however, is the recent news about a local Madison chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus working to make concealed carry legal on UW campuses. Prior to this, I hadn't even realized that there was a movement to allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campuses. Schools have always been a place I associate with being "gun-free/drug-free" areas.

UW graduate student Bret Bostwick founded the University of Wisconsin chapter three weeks ago. The group has received significant media attention in the wake of the death of UW junior Brittany Zimmermann and the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings.

The organization aims to “educate and advocate for concealed carry legislation” in Wisconsin supporting the right of individuals over the age of 21 who have completed training and obtained licenses to carry concealed weapons on campus, Bostwick said.

School-related shootings and murders tend to rile up the debate every time. The argument from the pro-concealed carry side tends to be "If the victim or someone near to the victim had been able to carry a gun, they could have stopped this from happening." The argument from the anti-concealed carry side tends to be "More guns just mean more accidents and deaths." Both sides often have good points, but a lot of that gets lost in the passions raised in between.

Too, it's difficult to come up with unbiased statistical analysis of how concealed carry does or does not impact crime in a particular area. There are also so many factors that play into violent crime rates that it must be extremely difficult to peg any lower or higher rates solely on gun ownership laws.

I'll admit, I'm not terribly comfortable with concealed carry laws in general. I don't particularly enjoy the idea that someone I pass on the street could be packing heat at any given time. I do believe that people should have the right to own certain kinds of guns and keep them in their homes or use them for hunting--contingent, of course, on the proper enforcement and following of background check, training and safety laws.

But for now, let's set aside the issue of general concealed carry laws and talk specifically about the idea of students and faculty being allowed to carry on campus. Traditionally, all school campuses have been "gun-free zones" - that is, no matter what a state's concealed carry laws are, they don't apply to campuses. This has been and continues to be the case in most states, with the exception of Utah, Virginia and Colorado. In late 2006, Utah's state Supreme Court struck down a ban on concealed weapons imposed by the University of Utah (based in Salt Lake City). That institution, backed by all other universities in the state, is currently working to get the decision reversed.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a national organization with 25,000 members, has branches on campuses in 45 states, including this new group at the UW-Madison (other Wisconsin schools with SCCC branches are MATC and Lawrence).

What's interesting about all of these efforts is that the main allies of groups like SCCC are state legislators, while school administrators and police organizations widely oppose such moves. I'm inclined to go with what police officers want in this case. They know better than most what it takes to responsibly handle a firearm, and they know, often first-hand, what kind of shit can go down in desperate situations where guns are drawn.

What it comes down to, at least for me, is the fact that police are trained to know how to handle themselves in sudden and tense situations where shots may be threatened and/or fire. Regular citizens, even many of those who go through all of the legal requirements for gun ownership, don't have that same level of training. In a situation where someone is being threatened, say, in a room full of fellow classmates, who's to say that the addition of one more gun isn't going to take even more lives than if it had just been the original perpetrator firing? Add to that situations where a person gets out of control, either through excessive drinking (something not all-together uncommon on campus), fights, or a bout of rash action.

But if we take guns away from law-abiding citizens, only criminals will have guns, right? This seems like a rational argument at first, but think about it this way: people break laws all the time, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of those laws all-together. They're there so that we have some clear guidelines on how to act, some sense of basic security, and appropriate punishments (implemented by people who've been educated and trained for it specifically) for those people who see fit to break the rules. Saying that we should all have the right to do something because criminals are already doing it anyway comes off sounding pretty ridiculous in this light.

I wouldn't feel safer on campus and in the classroom knowing that any one of my fellow students might be carrying a gun with them. There will always be some doubt, some insecurity in the world. Adding more fire to the fire? Wouldn't that, y'know, make the fire worse? How about actually enforcing existing gun laws, and creating faster, more effective ways of communicating danger to students on campus when incidents happen? Providing self-defense classes I'm all for, making sure people get appropriate mental health care when they need it I'm all for, but isn't the whole reason we're debating this in the first place because of guns on campus? Why allow for even more of them to be present, thus upping the likelihood of an accident or incident? That seems pretty illogical to me.

Dumbing down the discourse

The UW-Madison and its College Republicans played host to Fox News pundit and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin this past Friday. Naturally, there was a lot of hubbub leading up to the event. Some folks thought it was insane to even bring her here to speak, expressing shock that anyone of a more liberal persuasion would attend. The talk itself then involved several shouted obscenities from certain members of the crowd (a fact little commented on in the press, as far as I can tell), both during her talk and throughout the Q&A that followed.

This should be unacceptable for all parts of the political spectrum.

I understand, very well, the frustration of those with more left-leaning feelings. It certainly seems like factions of the far-right have hijacked the discourse and the law in this country, and many of them certainly don't shy away from ad hominem attacks and mudslinging. This makes it especially infuriating when they then, when faced with similar tactics, see fit to cry foul as though they themselves are without sin.

In the end, though, someone has to take the high road. Simply because your opponent stoops to a certain level doesn't mean that you should, too. This goes for the left, right and center. Interrupting someone, whether it be during an organized event or regular conversation, is rude and petty. It will do little to advance your point, and plenty to turn others off from hearing you out when it's your turn to speak.

I disagree with most of the positions Malkin takes, and as much as said positions tend to offend my sensibilities and occasionally fill me with rage--apply this to most conservative pundits, really--I would be extremely disappointed with myself if I ever let that anger bubble over into trying to silence their voices. Doubly so if that involved shouting "fuck you!" and "racist!" at someone during a rally or speech (with the except of a Neo-Nazi group or something).

I think it's safe to say that the majority of people--right, left and everything in between--want a better life for themselves and their children/families. We want to feel relatively safe, and to be free to pursue our own goals. We want to be heard. If there is to be any real progress, we need to elevate the level of discourse: do our best to restrain ourselves when we feel the (natural, but not good) urge to sling mud in order to discredit our opponents. Try to see where the other guy might be coming from. This doesn't mean you have to agree with them--Lord knows a little partisanship can be a good thing from time to time. But it should mean that we never stoop so far as to try to restrict someone's free speech, or to crassly interrupt them when they are speaking.

You know the old saying: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Immigrant Punk

An interesting and somewhat troubling immigration case has recently bubbled to the surface here in Madison. Tope Awe, a Nigerian-born graduate student at the School of Pharmacy at the UW-Madison, was unexpectedly taken into custody by the Milwaukee office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week, and is now being held in the Dodge County Jail awaiting deportation.

According to the Capital Times:

Friends said she had gone to discuss her immigration status. Awe reportedly came to the United States with her family at age 3, and friends said she knows no one in Nigeria.

ICE spokeswoman Gail Montenegro said Monday that Awe was an immigration fugitive with an outstanding removal order against her. Immigration fugitives typically do not have the right to a hearing before deportation, Montenegro said.

The 22-year-old student's father, Samuel Awe, lost an appeal for political asylum in 2003. That decision in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Samuel Awe's removal from his 1993-1995 stint as Nigeria's agriculture secretary, reportedly for not paying bribes to supervisors, and accusations that the frequent resident of the United States had ties to the CIA did not rise to the level of persecution.

Samuel Awe, his wife and three children were originally notified in 1998 that they had overstayed their visas, according to court documents. In denying Awe's appeal, the court granted the family voluntary departure to Nigeria.

Tope Awe was in custody Monday at the Dodge County Jail, which contracts with ICE. Also in custody was her brother, Oluwagbenga Awe, also seized on Thursday. He is a recent graduate of UW-Stevens Point and, according to family and friends, is married with a young child.

Samuel Awe and his wife, Julianah, live in the Milwaukee area where he is receiving medical treatment, according to published reports.

It's difficult to get a firm handle on the situation, as the details of the Awe's visa status are still murky. The family claims that the father's B-1/B-2 visa, for business and medical purposes, allows them to stay here until his treatment is finished. It is unclear, however, if 1) the visa applies to just Sam or to the whole family and 2) the visa is good until the completion of treatment. Sam Awe has kidney disease and has been undergoing treatment for it in Milwaukee for a number of years. I can't imagine he'd be able to get the same level of care if sent back to Nigeria.

Perhaps more confusing is Tope's student status. Having lived in Wisconsin for several years prior to enrolling both as an undergraduate at UW-Milwaukee and as a graduate student at UW-Madison, state residency was apparently not a problem to prove. But if the Awe's were notified in '98 that they were supposed to leave the country, how did they manage to stay on (and, for the children, attend state schools) for another 10 years? How did this never come up during enrollment?

Personally, I believe that anyone who has proven a commitment to being a contributing and law-abiding member of society should be granted permanent resident status. The Awe's seem to have done just that, but were instead rewarded with a denial of either an extension to their stay or a path to citizenship. Tope appears to have been an exemplary student, highly involved in campus life and advocacy while pursuing her studies. That she was asked to come in for a meeting to "regularize her residency status," voluntarily complied, and then simply arrested seems sketchy at best.

Still, all of the facts remain to be seen, and for better or for worse, the law is the law. So the trouble may be less that the law was enforced, and more that the law is broken.

This family clearly wanted to stay in the United States, and were, from what I've read, doing everything they could to do so legally. They paid taxes, registered cars, contributed to their communities, and plead their case all the way up to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals--only to meet with a door slammed in their faces. I can't blame them for fighting tooth and nail to stay here. Unfortunately, with the way the laws work now, they may have little to no recourse in this situation.

It is heartening to know that a significant number of Tope's fellow students and teachers are going to bat for her, pushing for her to be allowed to stay in the country at least until she graduates in 2009. An online petition has already garnered hundreds of responses, a number of UW officials are advocating for her, and state representatives have at least been contacted about the case.

This all just serves as yet another reminder of how complicated and dysfunctional our current immigration laws are. We really do need to find a way to get past all of the jingoism and knee-jerk reactions to the subject, and find a way to meaningfully debate and rework our policies. Policies that should have nothing to do with xenophobia and "dey took er jerbs!" style fear. We are, after all, a nation founded by immigrants (I'm talking about the nation founded long after the first inhabitants arrived here--which is a whole other story, of course). Ignoring that heritage, willfully or not, is hypocritical at best, dangerous at worst.

Go green to save green

When the talk turns to environmental sustainability and so-called "green" standards in business, one of the major counter arguments tends to be that it'll be too cost prohibitive, cut into a company's bottom line, and therefore be bad for business and the economy. I'm always tempted to fire back with "But you're putting profits before the long-term health and survival of the planet!" which, really, just tends to put people off. No one will ever convince anyone to change their ways by insulting their humanity.

Here's the thing, though: the more I research green technologies, the more I'm seeing that many of them actually save companies money in addition to saving resources. Ingenuity and a greater focus on sustainable practices have produced a whole slew of products and processes that are good for both the planet and the bottom line, but we seem to be falling short on actually promoting them. We have to get the word out, so that when it comes time to discuss new, greener ideas, the "it costs too much" argument will be mostly moot.

Right here at our very own UW-Madison, a man by the name of Marjid Sarmadi has developed a more sustainable way to make carpeting. I'll be honest; it's not something I'd ever thought of before. Apparently, however, making one square yard of carpet requires 50 gallons of water, significant amounts of energy and harmful chemicals like formaldehyde. Plus, it's the number one textile found in landfills.

However, Sarmadi has hit on a way to make carpeting that is 100% recyclable, doesn't use some of the more harmful chemicals, and actually costs less:

...the most surprising part of the project has been that the final project not only saves water and energy, but lasts longer and costs much less. Sarmadi’s carpeting standards have a 30–year warranty, as opposed to the typical 10— to 15–year warranty, and have saved the LACCD the equivalent of $40 million.

And there are stories like this one cropping up all over the place. Plus, green technologies create green jobs (y'know, that thing the presidential candidates have been gabbing on and on about). The renewable energy industry, for instance, has been seeing substantial growth, even in the midst of the current economic downturn.

Again, the main ingredient for seeing more successes like this one is will power: willingness to research and try new things, willingness to properly fund the efforts, willingness to place more emphasis on long-term benefits than short.

We've got opposable thumbs and big, squishy brains, and we've proved that we can make just about anything happen if we put our minds to it. In this case, it's both good stewardship and good business.

(h/t Isthmus Daily Page and TreeHugger)

You be the judge

The UW-Madison is taking the "unprecedented" step of suing the pants off a small, liberal arts college in Kansas that, they say, is infringing on trademark law by using a W logo that's too similar to the UW's own "Motion W" logo.

It seems like much ado about very little, but I'll let you all be the judge:

The UW's "Motion W" logo











Washburn's W logo










OK, sure, I can see where they're fairly similar. But hey, one's blue and the other is red. There's also no curve at the bottom of the Washburn logo. I don't know, my personal take on it is that this is a fairly frivolous lawsuit, and that the UW should probably just drop it. But then, I don't know a whole lot about trademark law. How similar does something have to be to be considered infringement?

The Nameless Gift

It sure pays to be an MBA, but I suppose that's nothing new. While I have a deep desire to see this level of giving applied to, say, the arts (yes, I'm a little biased), I can't help but be happy for the UW-Madison School of Business, which just received an astounding donation of $85 million from alumni who got rather into the Homecoming spirit this past weekend. What's even better, though, is the fact that the money comes with the stipulation that the school retain its name, instead of taking on the name of any individual or organization, for at least 20 years. In the era of Mountain Dew's Freakfest and the Ted Stevens International Airport, it's extremely refreshing to have at least some of our organizations left to just be what they are.

Just as good, perhaps, is the claim that the majority of the money will go to funding "people and programs, not facilities." Let's face it, the Business School isn't hard up for nice digs. But there were rumblings of losing the competitive edge over other schools in terms of faculty, especially as the state legislature routinely cuts funding for the UW system in general (and that whole no-benefits-for-domestic-partners thing, but that's a rant for another post).

Anyway, my congrats to the school and to the donors who so generously and, relatively humbly, gave quite a bit of dough. While I'm not 100% pro-business school, ours is well regarded in the US and the world as one of the best, with a strong emphasis on teaching the social, environmental and economic perspectives required in our global age. So, hooray for them.

Now if only our society would learn to value its writers, artists, musicians, social workers, etc., with the same kind of monetary and societal security. A girl can dream.

Ridiculous.

Reporting live from day 101 without a state budget here in Wisconsin, and the natives are getting more than restless. Jesse Russell over at dane101 has issued a call to arms to stand vigil at the capitol this Friday with signs letting legislators know what we think of them. Governor Doyle has said he will call a special session next week if a budget is not agreed upon by this Friday (wait, this sounds familiar). And Republicans, having nothing better to do I guess, are crying foul over emails sent to low-income UW students by state Democrats via UW officials asking them to participate in a press conference this morning calling on legislators to complete the budget. These students are currently in limbo, waiting to hear whether or not they'll receive their Wisconsin Higher Education Grants.

There's some merit to the charge in that I don't know that it's entirely proper for university officials to send out partisan solicitations to students who fit a certain criteria made known through what I presume are confidential lists. The better option would have been for Doyle's people to have made a blanket press release to students, asking any interested parties to help out. Whether or not the emailing thing is an actual breach of ethics, I don't know. It is a little shady, but sharper minds than mine will figure it out in the end.

Still, I'm hoping all involved parties deal with the more pressing issues first, and leave this for once we have an actual budget passed. Maybe having the lure of another Democratic witch-hunt in the offing will be enough to light a fire under state Republicans and get them to help move this process along. Then the only question is, what will it take to get Democrats moving, as well?