Wisconsin Journal

Number 4

19 September 1997



For this report I'll write about my impressions of campus and the

denizens thereof.



UW has a stellar academic reputation, with top-10 departments being

more the norm than the exception. It always comes out high in rankings

of public universities. There really isn't any significant in-state rival

for UW (unlike Oregon and Oregon State, or Washington and Washington

State), so it ends up having all kinds of programs: Humanities, Social

Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture, Business, Law

and Medicine. The campus stretches on for a couple miles along the

south shore of Lake Mendota--though part of it is occupied by

university housing and a large portion is undeveloped forest, as

far as I can tell.



Wisconsin also has a significant rep as a party school.  Just as I

arrived, the papers were full of the news that UW had been deemed the

number 2 party school in the nation by the Princeton Review. (They were

edged out by a school in West Virginia.)  About the same time, I

read that Wisconsin, the state, leads the nation in binge drinking,

defined as 5 or more drinks at one sitting. The reaction around here

seemed to be "If 5 is binge drinking, then why does beer come in 6-packs?"

I also read that Wisconsin has the highest number of bars per capita

in the nation, with Green Bay leading the rest of the state. Rules on

alcohol and children are more lenient here, to.  For example, it's

legal for children to be in a tavern, if they are with parents. (I

wish Luke would hurry up and get his license, so he can be the

designated driver.)  State law forbids selling liquor to a minor only

if he or she is not accompanied by a parent or spouse of legal drinking

age, and you can't ticket a child for underage drinking if a parent

is there.



Anyway, lots of parties around campus on weekends.  The local police

have a program called "Operation Sting" to investigate parties that

get too loud or unruly. I saw a list of suggestions in a student paper

(there are two--more later) to keep from attracting police attention.

One was to not go from party to party in large groups.  Another was

not to throw things or urinate off of balconies. I shall keep that

in mind.



I took turns exploring campus with the two kids and Kaye.  The computer

science building is near the south edge (away from the lake) of campus.

Luke and I set off exploring from there the first afternoon I

went into school. The building is next to the South Union, which

is an auxiliary student center with meeting rooms, a couple different

dining facilities, a small store and various game rooms downstairs.

One of the more interesting game options is "radioactive bowling",

where the lanes are lit with ultraviolet light, the balls glow in

the dark and lasers paint images on the ceiling. It thought it was

just a product of the fevered mind of college students, but I've

since seen it advertised at off-campus locations. We then worked our

way over to the main student center, the Memorial Union.  Along the

way we saw three different Lutheran student centers (ELCA, LCMS and WELS,

for those of you who can decipher the acronyms). The MU is much larger

than the South Union, with several theaters, art galleries, and a

Rathskeller that occupies most of the cellar. The Rathskeller opens

out onto the Terrace, overlooking the lake.  The Terrace is definitely

the place to be on summer afternoons.  From the MU we headed over

to the University Bookstore, passing by the "Red Gym", one of the oldest

buildings on campus, made of red brick, and currently being renovated.

After checking out the bookstore (good bargain book section), we

explored the university end of State Street.  (I'd explored the

other end, which terminates at the capitol square, when we visited

the farmers' market.  Still need to visit the middle.) We then made

our way home, noting the location of a small shopping mall with a

movie theatre.



Later that week, I did some more exploring with Sarah. The Geology

Department is just across the street from Computer Sciences, and they

have a small but interesting museum. Good collection of fossils.

Sarah and I liked the cephalapods.  These guys either looked like

a chambered nautilus, or like a nautilus with the shell unwound.

(Think of a squid in an ice-cream cone.) (Alright, *don't* think of

a squid in an ice-cream cone.) We also liked the flourescent mineral

display, which had both long-wave and short-wave black light, to show

how some rocks glow under one and not the other. We eventually ended

up at the terrace at the MU eating ice cream. (I had squid ripple.)



Friday of that week, Kaye joined me in the afternoon to go check out

the art museum on campus, called the Elvehjem. (Just say L-V-M with

a Swedish accent.) There was an interested exhibition of prints

made by a process where more than one color is printed with the same

plate at the same time. I wish I knew more about the technique--I

couldn't quite figure out how some of them could have been printed in

one go. We then ended up at the--guess where--terrace, although this

time the fare was beer and pretzels. I'm not sure how many student

unions in the country serve beer. The drinking age in Wisconsin used to

be 18, so it used to be that most college students were of age.



Other bits about campus:



There are two student newspapers, The Daily Cardinal and The Badger

Herald. The Herald is an independent started in the 70s by people who

thought the Cardinal was getting too liberal. There are also a couple

of weeklies in Madison that get distributed free on campus: The Isthmus

(similar to Willamette Week, for you Portland readers) and The Onion.

As far as I can tell, all the stories in The Onion are made up, except

for music and theater listings. It features the "Drunk of the Week."

Anyway, I get a lot of free reading material.



-Tons of bikes around here, and a fair number of motor scooters. I'm

not used to all the bike traffic--people ride to OGI, but campus is

compact enough that people don't ride their bikes around campus. I

seem to rely a lot on my ears for avoidance when I'm out walking, which

doesn't work real well for bikes.  I expect to get run over by one

before the year is out.



-The campus runs its own dairy plant. The ice cream from it is sold at

several places around campus, and you can buy packed ice cream and

cheese at the dairy store in Babcock Hall. They have about 20 kinds

of cheese, about half of which are varieties of cheddar and havarti.

On my visit there, I bought aged smoked cheddar (good), gouda and

pesto havarti (makes great cheese bread).



-There's a spur line to the railroad that runs right under my office

window. It's used to bring coal to one of the heating plants on

campus.



I'll close with a glimpse of campus politics. Those of you who track

campus wackiness may remember UW as the home of the Pail and Shovel

Party in the 70s, which virtually took over student government on

a platform of spending their share of student fees on parties and

goofiness, such as covering the main green with plastic flamingos,

and moving the Statue of Liberty to Madison. Their 90s reincarnation

is a party called Ten Fat Tigers. From what I can figure out, the

party got started last year, and has managed to get a few members

elected to the student assembly. They are led by their "Exalted Cyclops,"

Ben Granby. At the first assembly meeting of the year, another party

member, Vinh Bui, sat on Granby's lap for the whole proceedings,

and they fed each other grapes and bananas with their hands and feet.

One of the motions they introduced was to authorize prostitution on

campus (didn't pass). Previous Granby stunts include a mock crucifiction

on the library mall, attending a council meeting dressed as a sexual

submissive (and being whipped by a dominatrix all night) and a

re-enactment of the Jonestown Massacre to demonstrate "just how exciting

suicide can be if done corretly."



This past week the TFTs erected a 15-foot tall golden phallus on Bascom

Hill (in front of the university administration). They said it was the

first annual "Shaft of the Year" award, presented to the chancellor

in honor of an 8% tuition increase. Possibly because he wasn't notified

in time, the chancellor wasn't there to accept the award personally.

Granby described the award as "kind of like an Oscar, but a bit more

like a Peter." The awards ceremony was attended by about 15 members of

Ten Fat Tigers dressed in lab coats, goggles and bubblewrap. I didn't

get to see it, but the Herald ran two color pictures.



Dave



PS: The top story in the student papers today was the 66 tickets (at

$148 a pop) issued to underage drinkers by police in Operation Sting.

At one party, the police found one guy hiding in the keg cooler about

45 minutes after they first raided the party.  At another, a girl

got a second citation for lying to the police.  She said she had been

drinking, but it had been with her parents, who were in town for the

weekend.  The police called her parents at Howard Johnson's, and

daddy said no way.