http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=1190&mname=ArticleGroup Recent news stories en-us 60 Airport Security: Federal regulation does not enforce full screening of employees upon shifts By Laura Kezman (with reporting assistance by Andrea Thompson) December 1, 2009   Approximately 1.8 million airplane passengers check their luggage, remove their shoes and walk through metal detectors every day in airports across the country.  The checkpoints that must be passed in order for each of these passengers to board the steel aircraft are federally mandated—but not for airport employees.   There is no law that obliges airport workers, even those who have physical contact with planes, to undergo the same degree of screening passengers do upon entering work each day, a Frontpage Milwaukee investigation has found.  The minimal requirements that airports are required to exercise on their employees, especially those who work in secured areas, is to issue at least a 10-year background check, fingerprinting and a drug screening upon being hired, according to both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).   “As far as screening each employee one-hundred percent like a passenger, it has not yet become a national regulation that the airport is required to adhere to,” says Cheryl Sherbrock, the Manager of Operational Security at Midwest Airlines.   Some airports demand it, however.  According to Sherbrock, how the security of an airport is structured varies from location to location due to its geographical set-up.  Some require all employees to be screened as passengers would be each time they enter work, though she did not verify which airports in particular.  She asserts that a separate line is issued specifically for workers to avoid congestion, and they too will dump their belongings into a plastic bin to be X-rayed and will proceed through the metal detectors.   TSA is present in every airport in the country—randomly rummaging through neatly packed pieces of luggage to ensure there is nothing dangerous before the belt-loaders deliver it to the belly of the airplane.  They are the ones federally appointed to implement these national security measures, but it is at the discretion of the airport to employ any additional measures they feel are necessary, Sherbrock says.   According to Pat Rowe, Public Information Officer of Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport, every airport employee only has access to the areas they need to get to in order to do their job—from the Burger King located in the Terminal to the ramp.     “There are central federal directives given to TSA and the airport security director, spelling out employee security,” Rowe says while speaking into the speakerphone on her desk “Security clearance is based on the types of clearance you need to work.”   For workers requiring access to secured areas of the airport, such as the giant parking lot for the airplanes known as the ramp, a Security Identification Display Areas (SIDA) badge must be issued.  These electronically activated badges grant employees who work with the planes and passenger luggage, formally referred to as “ramp agents,” access through the closely monitored doors.   In order to receive a SIDA badge, a training period must be completed before the airport Badging Office can issue it to the employee and is described by Rowe as “very rigorous.”   A background check of 10 years is the minimum, but a check dating further back than that is not uncommon, Sherbrock says.  As regulated by TSA, only employees seeking to gain access to secured areas must receive this extensive check—workers within the airline’s corporate office, for example, do not.   Some airlines, like Midwest, own its own fingerprinting equipment that makes it possible for the airline to individually conduct the background checks.  Once this is carried out, all of the information goes to a central repository that is filtered through the FBI.   “Some airlines have the airport do it (the security screening) for them, while some airports insist on doing the fingerprinting and other checking themselves” Sherbrock says over the phone “Mitchell does not do that, but it is all based on the airport’s policy.”   While the structure of each airport’s security policies may differ, one that is firmly mandated among every United States airport is the requirement of an authorized badge for every person on the ramp—in contrast to years ago when an airport was able to allow airline carriers to escort people onto the ramp who did not have one, Sherbrock recollects.  Prior to ramp agents being trained for their actual duties, they must familiarize themselves with the thick stack of handbook pages stressing the importance of security while on the ramp and the liability that lies in obtaining a badge.   “The first week of training was all the basic stuff to get your SIDA badge and to verify your driver’s license,” says former Midwest Airlines Ramp Agent Adam Thornberry through the hissing of an espresso machine “It was held at the headquarters on Howell Ave.  Once we got our badges, then we could go to the airport to finish the on-ramp training.”   Though it is not regulated for airport workers to stand next to the travelers waiting to get screened by TSA, at Mitchell Airport, a series of checkpoints is said to exist behind the scenes.   “Without going into a lot of detail, being that it is a security process after all, yes. Checkpoints are set up randomly and they are the same as for the passengers,” Rowe said confidently.   However, Thornberry recalls the security checks during and average day’s work to be significantly less than those of the passengers.  Between the long walk from the parking lot to the Midwest ticket counter and beyond into the actual ramp room, the toughest point of security he encountered was two of the doors requiring his SIDA badge to be swiped preceding the entry of his personal identification number.   TSA intends to combat the possibility of these ramp agents, informally referred to as “rampers,” entering the ramp with dangerous items by “frequent, but random” searches, says Rowe.  She upholds their effectiveness by having personally seen them carried out and insists on them being very thorough.   Thornberry says that during nearly a year of working for Midwest, he was met by a TSA agent sitting at one of the checkpoint doors on a “couple” of different occasions.  One time in particular he remembers having his opened bottle of Mountain Dew checked for containing radioactive matter.   “They did some kind of test with a sheet of paper where they waved it over the top and dropped some chemicals on it,” he said.   Sherbrock avows that the extensive training and background checks performed in order for employees to receive their badges counterweigh the lack of daily, methodical security screenings.   “People fail to realize how extensive the screenings are upon getting hired,” she reiterates “If employees knew where the security checkpoints were at all times, wouldn’t it become easier for someone to get around it?”   An article published by The Times-Union on the TSA website in May 2007 addresses the new initiatives for stricter employee security by way of random searches.  Ed Goodwin, TSA’s federal security director in Jacksonville, discusses the positives in making employee checks unsystematic.   “Anytime you’re increasing your presence and doing more random searches, you’re increasing awareness,” he said. “They know we’re serious about it.”   It is even said that some airlines do multiple background checks while an employee is still with the company.  Though unsure if that is a practice exercised by all airlines, Airtran Airways spokesperson Christopher White says that it is something they carry out.   “Backgrounds are checked on a recurring basis for everyone who has a badge,” states White.   So, what would have happened if the test for Thornberry’s Mountain Dew came back positive for radioactive matter?  Or, if another ramper failed the random search conducted by TSA?   “It depends on how they failed it,” Sherbrock said “If necessary, there will be criminal consequences which then would lead to termination from the company.”   In such an instance, the employee’s SIDA badge will be immediately deactivated and they are required to physically hand it over to an authorized person who must return it to the Badging Office—as all employees are required to do after leaving the company, according to White.  It is not publicly known how many times this has occurred with employees at Mitchell Airport, given that the records that would indicate such a number are confidential, but it is acknowledged by Rowe that records are in fact kept.   Just as hundreds of ramp agents walk onto the ramp with their steel-toed boots each day across Mitchell’s three concourses, many walk off with no intention of returning.  This means that many SIDA badges slip through the cracks without being returned, even after the airline’s “peaceful” attempts to retrieve them, says Sherbrock.  She insists that every effort is made to get them back and records are kept of every employee that detail whether or not a badge was returned.   If a past worker attempted to use the unreturned badge, however, not only would it not work—it would signal a red flag within the airport’s security network and a Milwaukee County Sheriff would appear at the checkpoint within seconds, according to Rowe.   Similar to the individual inspections issued randomly by TSA, records are also kept of the federally regulated background checks.    “The airport submits the background checks on a pass/fail basis,” says Rowe “Whether or not there are a number of failed background checks, I’m not sure what that would be—but it is agency-kept information.”   Midwest Airlines spokesperson, Mike Brophy also was not certain if there were a concrete number of failed background checks recorded specifically for the airline.   “I’m not sure,” Brophy said, who primarily handles business-oriented questions regarding the airline “But I think we do to make sure no one tries to get through again.”   Though it is safe to say that most features of security for airport workers happens behind closed doors, either being the procedures at SIDA checkpoints or the information locked in TSA file cabinets, the issue of airport employee security is not out-of-sight, out-of-mind for certain political leaders.   Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY), who serves New York’s 18th District, has been very instrumental in attempting to tighten the security belt when it comes to airport employees.  During her time as a member of the Congressional Committee, she initiated a program entitled the “Pilot 100 Program”—which started and ended in 2008.   Based on the framework of the program, a handful of airports across the country were cherry-picked to test out how it would work if all workers were 100 percent screened, as passengers are, every time they enter work.  The results of this pilot test are not yet determined, and when they are, will not be released to the public.   Sherbrock affirms the certainty in their being a Pilot 100 Program, but is hesitant to believe that it would work.   “Yes, that did happen to select airports across the country—but I’m not at liberty to say which airports the pilots were disclosed in,” she says “But it may not even be feasible for all airports in the country to do this because of how each airport is configured geographically.”   It is unknown if Mitchell was an airport chosen to participate in the program.   A bill called the “Strengthen Aviation Security Act” similarly proposed the same agenda: strengthen aviation security.  It was introduced to the House of Representatives on May 26, 2005, passed to the Committee on Homeland Security on June 6 of that same year, and has been idle ever since.   Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the sole instigator of the bill, aimed for all airport workers to encounter a minimum of a metal detector upon entering each shift.  Sec. 11 entitled “Control Over Access to Secured Areas of Airports” in the bill seeks to modify a portion of title 49 of the United States Code to read: “Requiring (airport workers) at a minimum, to be physically screened for metallic objects and to have their personal bags inspected for prohibited items, such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials, each time that individual enters a secure area of the airport.”   Markey is the author of the 100 percent air cargo screening requirement signed into law as part of the act carrying out the proposals for the 9/11 Commission (P.L. 110-53) and considers Homeland Security to be one of his central issues.   Both Sherbrock and Rowe recall the familiarity of the bill, but uphold the fact that it was never passed.  Sherbrock elaborates that initiatives like these made by politicians may have a self-serving agenda.   “I really believe the it’s all political and is a tactic for them to be elected,” she says bluntly “I mean, I don’t have a problem with these new programs TSA and Congress are passing—but in today’s world, (something dangerous) could happen anywhere.  It just so happens that we’re (the airport) is under a microscope as an expected target—Aviation is always under a microscope.”   Sherbrock chooses to give all of the workers employed through Midwest Airlines the benefit of the doubt and does not assume that because they have access to restricted areas, they are going to do anything bad.   “I would not say we’re any more at risk than any other companies—but I actually feel we’re less of a threat due to the amount of security precautions that are taken on a daily basis,” she says while expressing the confidence she has in the current airport security system designed and enforced by TSA.   It is by all accounts not to Sherbrock, Rowe, Brophy or Thornberry’s knowledge if there has been any recent occurrence within Mitchell Airport that would imply security for airport employees is lacking in anyway.  And if there were, record of it would be held exclusively by TSA. Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:48:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25964&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25964&mname=Article Atomic Verses Atomic By Jacob Schneider Staff Writer Frontpage Milwaukee December 2009 It was a Milwaukee institution for nearly a quarter century and in February of this year, Atomic Records closed its doors for the last time. After years of declining sales in the music industry and a free falling economy to seal the deal, Atomic Records owner Rich Menning was forced to put his 1913 E. Locust St. storefront to rest and live with its legacy, or so he thought. This June, just a few months after the well attended “Atomic Valentine” farewell show, held at the Miramar Theatre, a new tenant moved into Menning’s former digs - a head shop with a similar name: Atomic Glass. Since the stores opening, Menning has taken issue with the new proprietor’s choice to use the Atomic label as a part of his head shop’s name. A sarcastic web statement released by Menning on June 17, 2009 shows his displeasure. “Hello, friends of Atomic Records. Rich here. I'm dusting off my rusty HTML skills because it has come to my attention that some sort of organization known as "Atomic Glass" is opening in the location formerly occupied by Atomic Records. I want it to be known that Atomic Glass has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Atomic Records. That's all I've got right now. That and the realization that there are some really lame people in this world.” David Kelly, owner of Atomic Glass was surprised by the statement. “He has never spoken to us about it. All we saw was the online post. There was no direct dealings between [Rich Menning] and us, he was a tenant. The building is owned by a large property owner in town, Action Property Management. He was a tenant of theirs and [the space] became open for lease.” Kelly went on to explain the name choice, “It's honoring. Atomic Records was a Milwaukee institution for years. We're honoring its memory and its legacy by saying 'hey, it's still Atomic here.'" Extreme Makeover While Atomic is still in the name, there is a wholly different array of wares being peddled at the latest incarnation of the store. Featuring a variety of decorative glass smoking accessories made for “legal use only,” as numerous signs will tell you, Atomic Glass is taking a different approach in utilizing the square footage of the store. The floor space where music shoppers used to browse CD and vinyl racks is virtually empty. Upon entry and an ID check, customers walk into the show room, where display cases are filled with · Bats · Spoons · Bubblers · Vaporizers The walls are lined with glass tubes, some as tall as three feet. The cases that aren’t filled with glassware contain legal herb smoking blends, whip cream dispensers and chargers, and the psychoactive herb, Salvia divinorum. A new wall has been put up on the eastern side of the store, serving as a divider for Atomic’s in house glass blowing studio, which occupies the same space previously used for in store performances when Atomic was a record store. Smoker’s Studio Having the studio serves two different purposes for the store - renting space to professionals, and providing glass blowing classes for beginners. Local professional glass blowers can rent space with rates based on their needs. “Some blowers need a torch, or kiln space, they may even need to purchase raw glass from us,” Kelly explains. The classes that Atomic Glass offers are set up on a prerequisite system, where students must complete introductory classes to move on to do more advanced work. The three introductory classes vary between 3-6 hours and cost $150-250. Tools and materials are provided for all classes, and students are able to keep what they make. Click here for more information on available classes from Atomic Glass. One loyal Atomic Records customer, Drew Schuldt doesn’t have a problem with the new store’s name. “I think it’s cool that the ‘Atomic’ name is sticking around. Atomic Records was kind of a big deal to a lot of people, and by name at least, it would seem as though they trying to keep some of the same spirit alive. However, as a head shop, it’s only going to attract a certain type of people, which kind of defeats the purpose.” Schuldt also thinks the name choice was smart. “I have no reason to go to a head shop, but calling it Atomic Glass at least keeps me somewhat interested in seeing what they've done with it. I think it was a good business decision.” Another longtime Atomic Records fan, Chris Forston disagrees, “I think that it kind of taints the legacy of the original name. However, I think it has to come down to a legal perspective whether or not he can use the name. At the end of the day it is not a moral issue.” Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:28:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25427&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25427&mname=Article Loop Yarn Shop, LLC. By Staci Staffaroni of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff December 2009 As winter approaches in Milwaukee you have likely already turned your heat on, switched out your fall coat for it’s warmer winter alternative, and maybe heated up some soup. However, have you considered a new pair of gloves, a hat, or a scarf? Perhaps you have, but you likely may not have considered making those items yourself…and that is where the ladies of “Loop” come in. Loop Yarn Shop, located at 2963 N. Humboldt Blvd is adjacent to Alterra. The shop sells knitting and crocheting supplies, patterns, and books; in addition to yarn, yarn, and more yarn in every color imaginable. Owner Caitlin Walsh moved the location to the Riverwest neighborhood two years ago in August. Loop was originally located in Bayview, where it was in business for three years. If you do not already know how to knit or crochet, they have you covered there as well. In addition to supplies, the shop offers classes on both knitting and crocheting. The curriculum varies and Loop offers classes for beginners to advanced students. Patricia Colloton-Walsh, Caitlin’s mother and Loop instructor has been knitting for 50 years and crocheting for 40. Cumulatively the entire shop staff has over 95 years experience in knitting and 61 years experience in crocheting. “The First Sweater class is really fun to teach,” said Colloton-Walsh, wearing an olive button-down half sweater knit by Caitlin. Hand knitting or crocheting is an inexpensive option for many to make their own winter accessories and sweaters and in a down economy, many do just that. Loop’s business has not been down despite the struggling economy. “We have tons of young, new knitters and crocheters,” said Walsh, who has been knitting for 11 years and crocheting for 12. Winter Wonder-LOOP… One might assume a yarn shop’s business starts to rise when temperatures start to drop. “Our business does increase in the winters,” said Walsh. “We are about twice as busy in the winter as we are in the summer,” she added. Milwaukee had record snowfall in 2008 and the ever-trusted Farmer’s Almanac predicts this winter will be very cold. Winter officially starts Dec. 21. According to the 2010 Farmers’ Almanac, “this winter will see more days of shivery conditions: a winter during which temperatures will average below normal for about three-quarters of the nation.” The Farmer’s Almanac prediction for the Midwest from Jan. to Mar. 2010 is “bitterly cold and dry.” ( HYPERLINK "http://www.farmersalmanac.com/" http://www.farmersalmanac.com/) A yarn shop may be very inviting to some in those conditions. The Shop… From the outside, handmade knit and felt décor hang whimsically in the long storefront windows. A hand knit, puffy Loop sign welcomes you as you enter the shop. The brightly lit shop has a warm feel. Just below the sign, are three spinning racks of various knitting and crocheting needles in the front corner. At the back wall in white-boxed shelving rests what likely amounts to thousands of yards of yarn. Atop the shelves sit pattern books and knit hats, scarves and sweaters on half-scale dress forms. There always seems to be a customer in the shop. Behind the register on the wall hangs another hand knit sign, this one large, bright pink squares with capital letters spelling out LOOP. A small sale section sits just before the register, complete with handmade signs. In the front of the shop, “Eyelash” brand yarn arranged in a rainbow lays in an angular boxed table. Lining the front of the shop are many more pattern books and baskets of yarn, some atop antique shelving. As you continue moving with the clean lines of the shop, you come upon three wooden worktables arranged parallel to one another. Loop teaches the classes here, utilizing the sturdy worktables in the front of the store. Learning from Mom… Colloton-Walsh organizes the course curriculum and teaches many of the classes. Knit 103 is one of the courses she teaches in a series of three basic knitting courses. Ellie Pierson, a Montessori art teacher, took Knit 101 and 102. She currently is taking the 2-hour Knit 103 course. “The first classes were really essential,” said Pierson. Pierson started knitting last summer after stopping into Loop. “Initially I drove by and I stopped in because of all the colors,” said Pierson. Pierson recently relocated from South Carolina to Wisconsin. She knew she would have to adapt to harsh winter conditions. With the help of Loop, she can now make her own winter accessories. She has already knitted a scarf-like cowel, “It was intended to be a hat,” Pierson laughed. Regina Grautz is taking the Knit 103 class with her daughter Lisa. “I’ve knit sweaters, scarves, and headbands,” said Grautz when asked about what she had made recently. All beginning classes are 2 hours in length. The classes cost $15.00 per hour and supplies for beginning classes are around $20.00. “It’s great because people can learn the skills to make something [in 2 hours] and immediately go home and get started,” said Colloton-Walsh. Colloton-Walsh agreed their business tends to increase around the holidays and in winter, but added “We teach classes year-round, but in the summer we tend to do more crocheting.” Loop also teaches kids classes in knitting and crocheting. Customers are welcome to continue shopping even when classes are going on. The passion to continue… Loop’s customers keep coming. Loop indicated they have a large returning customer base. Walsh attributes much of the returning customer base to having both Alterra and UWM close by. The recession that has hit many of us has not affected Loop Yarn Shop. “The shop has not struggled because of the recession,” said Walsh. “[I think] people are staying home more and they need stuff to do so people tend to hang onto their hobbies during a recession.” However, Walsh admits it is not always easy. “Having a small business is very fun but it can be tough also,” said Walsh. “You have to be committed and feel a passion for your business or your wouldn't have any fun or drive to continue.” To see the December schedule of Loop classes visit: "http://www.loopyarnshop.com/calendar/index.php?action=display&year=2009&month=12" http://www.loopyarnshop.com/calendar/index.php?action=display&year=2009&month=12 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:44:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25360&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25360&mname=Article Cesar A. Rojas Front Page Milwaukee Dec. 10, 2009 The sun was setting on Good Friday in a well-known south side neighborhood in Milwaukee. Noah Leigh and his partner Paul headed down to the basement of an apartment complex. The two had heard rumors that residents in the workshops had experienced an invisible presence in one of the rooms. Armed with cameras, an electromagnetic frequency (EMF) meter, and voice recorders, the Medical College graduate student and the maintenance technician headed into a dimly lit room with an old Peanut’s cartoon blanket in the doorway, containing scattered boxes, cheap paneling on the walls, a stairway that went no where. The room had a small tiled bathroom that residents were inexplicably afraid to use. Meet the Ghost Hunters of Milwaukee. The Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee, PIM (http://www.paranormalmilwaukee.com/) and the Greater Milwaukee Paranormal Research Group GMPRG (http://www.gmprg-wi.com/) seek to find and record evidence of the existence of spiritual entities, using modern day technology and scientific methods. They believe that ghosts and demons can manifest themselves in electronic medium, such as video and sound recordings. What they are trying to capture are known as electronic voice phenomenon EVP, a sound recording made by a spirit. They set up cameras to capture object moving by an invisible force. And they are serious about what they do, though they do seem to have fun doing it. Leigh, who said he has always been interested in the paranormal, founded PIM in 2007. As a full time student pursuing his PhD in biomedical science full-time, and conducts investigations at night and on the weekends. He and two other members, Candice Kozinski, 22, who works works full-time private security for GE Healthcare, and Steve Gomon, 46, a software engineer at Symmetrix in Brookfield met with Front Page Milwaukee in a Greenfield McDonalds, which Leigh said is a neutral place he likes to meet when discussing the group to a new potential member. Leigh has pretty high standards for potential members. They are listed on his website. One requirement is that you must have a job. Besides a litmus test for character, it helps the member make a living, since paranormal investigators do not get paid for their services. Jean Wright, 36, founded GMPRG in November of 2006 and is currently leading a new team of investigators. David Atwater, 41, Charles Bruss, 37, David “D.W.” Steffen, 39, Lisa Kalwitz, 35, Brad Hagen, 41, and Eric Mcgreary, 38. and Alice Pillsbury – 40, have been working together now for about six months. “We’re not kooks that are working in a kitchen,” said Atwater, an insurance agent, describing his team. “We’re respected members of the community.” He points to the fact that no one has purple hair, or large piercings and tattoos. “We’re run of the mill,” said Atwater. The GMPRG team meets at the coffee section at Borders book store in Greenfield, to discuss what they found during investigations, or to plan their next outing. They showed Front Page Milwaukee some of their findings from a St. Patrick’s Day investigation they did at the Tabernacle Cemetery in Pewaukee. The group reviewed audio recordings, as well as pictures they took of the location and tried to determine if anything could be considered paranormal. The team listens to an audio file, but while some think they hear a voice, the team later decides it is just leaves. They move on to the next piece, a face on a car window. They try to recreate how the image could have been made. No dice. It fails the team’s tests. “If I don’t think it can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, than I would conclude its nothing,” said Jean Wright. “Personal experiences don’t count, they can’t prove it,” said Wright about the existence of spirits. Leigh agrees. “90 percent of paranormal activity is not paranormal,” he said. “It could be pipes rattling, high stress, psychological.” PIM can find some reasons why a client is sensing a certain phenomenon and that usually makes the client feel better. But these investigators are in the business to get tangible evidence. Familiar Spirits Wright founded the original team after years of personal experiences she believes are paranormal in nature. In a quiet tone, she described one experience in particular. When her father passed away, Wright and her family cleaned out the farm while the new owners cleaned out the barn. That is when they heard footsteps. “My grandmother saw dad’s image in the dining room,” said Wright. Other experiences also lead her on her quest to find a group, like the death of her ex-boyfriend who’s presence she described as “a tingly feeling.” “I don’ t know how to explain it,” said Wright, “[it is] like when someone is looking at you.” Other members relate similar experience. Two paranormal investigators, one from each team, also described having “sensitive” abilities. There are lots of different names, mediums, psychic. Kozinski and Pillsbury both described the ability to sense spirits. Every person uses their own method to be sensitive. Kozinski said she has done some research into the topic of sensitives, and found that it usually happens in puberty. She can now do ‘automatic writing,’ a process where she ‘carefully’ allows a spirit to write through her. “You have to be very careful,” said Kozinski, who said it was difficult for her to explain. Pillsbury visited a psychic because she was experiencing strange encounters. “I kept getting woken up,” said Pillsbury, “and I kept hearing my name was being whispered, ‘Alice, Alice,’” she said. Before she could say anything, the psychic asked Pillsbury if she was being woken up, and if she was hearing her name. Pillsbury said it was happening all the time. When I went to see her, before I even said anything, she asked, “Are you being woken up, are you hearing your name?” Pillsbury said, all the time. The psychic told Pillsbury that her grandmother was trying to reach her. “She described my grandmother to a T, the bun in her hair, everything,” said Pillsbury. “And what she was trying to tell her was that she was doing it all wrong.” Pillsbury said she never found out what she was doing wrong, but she never was woken up after that. She has never returned to the psychic again. The Lights go off Back at the apartment building, PIM begins to record EVPs. They decide to do this in the dark. Paul is video recording as Leigh leads using an audio recorder and EMF recorder. Leigh starts by recording the date, time, and location. The room has high EMF readings, according to Leigh, but it could simply be the exposed wiring. That might explain the sensation residents felt. People sensitive to EMFs describe: Nausea Dizziness feeling that someone is watching them. Then he addresses any spirit that may be in our midst in the darkness. “Is there anyone here that would like to communicate with us,” said Leigh. “If so, please step forward, we are not here to hurt you.” It is as silent as a tomb. In the darkness that envelops, only the tiny lights of the equipment is visible. The little red lights of the two audio recorders, and the green light from the camcorder. But Leigh said the more evidence they gather, perhaps more money can be spent on research. GMPRG investigated of an older building in Wales. Setting up cameras on the main floor of the building, built in the early 1910s, they are connected to a security monitor to catch any movement of objects. A sweep of the building showed peculiar EMF readings. Atwater, who bought the building and is working to fix it, said he has experienced strange noises. As the EMF meters beeped quickly, Atwater insists that the electrical wiring is not connected. When all is done, the groups will review the hours of evidence. “We’re happy right where we are,” said Wright of her team. “We don’t want a TV show, there’s a lot here.” Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:50:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25305&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25305&mname=Article Modern Warfare a Big Hit in Milwauke By Jason Kopplin Of the Frontpage Milwaukee staff November 2009 On a warm November night, a group of young men waited outside a video game store on Capitol Drive in Milwaukee. The entire strip mall was dark. Every store was closed. They were lined up to buy a hot new product at the instant it was available the next day. The video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” launched nation-wide at midnight on Tuesday, November 10 to long lines across the country, becoming the largest media event in history along the way. Matt Syverson was among those waiting at the Game Stop on Capitol Drive for the midnight launch event. He had preordered his copy, “easily over two months ago” and had been waiting outside the store since 8:00 Monday night. “This game will be dominating my life for the next week,” said Syverson. “Modern Warfare 2” broke preorder records at leading games retailers such as Game Stop, Game Crazy and Best Buy. Tyler Blesetz was one of those who ordered the game in advance in order to get his copy as soon as possible. “I’m only going to be playing multiplayer, probably for the first couple of months,” said Blesetz. That multiplayer mode is one of the game’s biggest strengths. Gamers can play online against friends and strangers in various cooperative and competitive modes. The original “Modern Warfare” has been out almost two years and continues to be one of the most played online games, even after the release of its sequel. Modern Controversy The game, however, does contain a story mode as well. The “Modern Warfare” series has players taking the role of various military personnel dealing with events inspired by the current political climate including levels in Afghanistan and Russia as well as the United States. “I’ll definitely play the story mode,” said Robert Porter, also waiting in line for his copy. “I was looking over screen shots from the game all morning and I’m very excited.” This latest installment in the series has met with some controversy over its story. One early level has players taking the roll of a C.I.A. agent placed deep undercover within a Russian terrorist cell. The mission forces the player to partake in an attack on a Russian airport. While the player does not have to shoot anyone, they are not allowed to stop the attack. Developer Infinity Ward defended the controversial scene, claiming it was intended to show the player brutal actions sometimes necessary for the greater good. By participating in this attack and killing dozens, the character hopes to gain information which could help prevent even larger acts of terrorism in the future. The Russian government decided to ban the game and recalled all copies from stores over the controversial content. Most gamers, including those waiting in line for the midnight launch didn’t seem bothered by the content. According to Thad Harrison, who was waiting in line to purchase the title, it’s just a video game. “We’ve seen stuff like this in movies and books before and it’s not a big deal,” said Harrison. Record Breaking Sales By all accounts, gamers were not deterred from buying the game. According to publisher Activision, “Modern Warfare 2” sold 4.7-million units in the first 24 hours in North America and the United Kingdom alone, grossing just over $310-million. To put that in perspective, last summer’s hit film “The Dark Knight” grossed $150-million in its entire opening weekend. Day one sales have already made the game the largest entertainment product launch ever and sales are expected to remain strong through the holiday season. Terrance Mouzone wasn’t at the midnight launch, but picked up a copy Tuesday morning from the Game Stop in the shops at Grand Avenue in downtown Milwaukee. “They had hundreds of copies behind the counter, but they were selling fast,” said Mouzone. Those copies apparently flew off the shelves and into gamers’ consoles to play online. In addition to breaking preorder and sales records, the game also broke records for online play. Over 2-million users were playing the game simultaneously on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming console according to a Microsoft press release. The game is also available on Sony’s PlayStation 3 and the PC. The multiplayer is the real lure for most players. “I’ve played a little bit of the campaign, but I mostly bought it for the multiplayer,” said Muzoune. “ It’s more of a social activity. My friends and I play a lot together. It’s our way of hanging out. I’ve logged about eleven hours in multiplayer from Tuesday to Friday. Considering I’m a full-time student with a job, I’d call that a lot.” A History and a Future The “Call of Duty” franchise has been a best seller since the release of the original game in 2003. The series originally focused on the events of World War II. It wasn’t until the fourth installment titled “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2” that the series launched into the mainstream. Changing the setting to a contemporary Middle East and introducing a revolutionary multiplayer was all it took to set up the successful game’s sequel to be the biggest launch ever. Considering the series has had at least one new entry year since 2003, gamers shouldn’t have to wait long for their next dose of action. “I’m really having a blast,” said Muzoune. “But I just can’t wait for Modern Warfare 3.” Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:05:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25235&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25235&mname=Article Beer tax won’t pass this session   By Sean McGraw Nov. 29, 2009 Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff   Milwaukee – State Rep. Terese Berceau says that her bill to raise taxes on beer production from $2 to $10 per barrel will not pass this session but that she will continue to bring it back for every session that she is re-elected.   Assembly Bill 287 was introduced by Berceau as a measure to both combat Wisconsin’s drinking problem and to raise taxes on an industry that hasn’t had an increase in taxes in over 40 years.  The bill was met with strong opposition from breweries in Wisconsin as they believe that it is not fair to tax the producers but that the state should have harsher penalties for the abusers.   The bill would tax the producers of the beers, but the brunt of the burden would be felt by consumers say brewers.   “You should penalize the person abusing and try not to tax the consumer, especially in this economic climate, its one of the luxuries we have,” said Russ Klisch, President of Lakefront Brewery Co.   According to Berceau, the tax would barely be felt by the consumers if all other factors were to stay the same.   “You would have to drink a six-pack of beer every single day in order to generate one extra dollar in taxes,” she said.   Assembly Bill 287   Under the current tax breweries are charged at $2 per barrel produced and for breweries that produce less than 300,000 barrels a year, the first 50,000 barrels produced are only taxed at half the rate.    Assembly Bill 287 doesn’t change that system of taxation, but it does increase the overall taxes from $2 to $10 per barrel.  That would mean that instead of paying $1 a barrel for the first 50,000 breweries would be paying $5 a barrel for the first 50,000 and then $10 for every barrel after that.   However, nearly all of the breweries were certain that the tax would be the onus of the consumers.   “Raising the tax on [production] means we will probably have to pass that on to our customers,” said George Bluvas, Director of Brewing operations at all three Water Street Brewery locations.  “We will try to keep prices down; I believe we have the cheapest beer on tap of all the brewpubs right now.  If our margins get shrunk by increased taxes, at a time when they are already shrunk by a bad economy, it may force us to raise prices.”     Wisconsin’s Drinking Problem   Most of the breweries questioned whether Wisconsin actually has a drinking problem and stated that they didn’t think that Wisconsin was any worse than anywhere else.   “Is Wisconsin’s drinking problem that bad?” asked Klisch, “I don’t think that it’s worse than any other place.”   Begging to differ, Berceau’s website has a PowerPoint that outlines some of the studies showing that Wisconsin does have a drinking problem that may be worse than what most people think.   According to the studies: Wisconsin ranks 48th worst in the nation in alcohol-related per capita health care expenses. In Wisconsin, alcohol and drug abuse in the 4th leading cause of death behind heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Wisconsin is tied for 4th (with Louisiana) for the highest percentage of driver fatalities in which blood alcohol concentrations  exceed .08 Wisconsin ranks 5th highest per-capita for alcohol consumption from beer   “I am astounded that people can’t figure out that they are already being taxed because of this state’s drinking problem.  They just have to look at their taxes and see that they are paying through corrections,” said Berceau.   Sprecher   According to Jeff Hamilton, VP and General Manager of Sprecher Brewing Co., most small breweries use Wisconsin suppliers for their brewing needs. If the bill were to have gone through as proposed, there would have been a ripple effect.   “We use a lot of Wisconsin based suppliers for our brewing needs.  If this tax were to go through as proposed, not only would it affect [Sprecher], it would also affect those suppliers that we use,” said Hamilton.   Hamilton also said that if this tax were to have gone through, Sprecher would have to cut some of their work force in order to combat the negative effects.   “They want so much [in taxes] to curb consumption that we would have to lose 2 or 3 of the people that we employ,” he said.   Berceau said that it is “the industry’s business to fight tax” and although Bill 287 will not pass this session, Berceau plans to introduce it every session, as well as continue to work with the smaller breweries so that they won’t be hit so hard by a five-fold increase in taxes.   “I will continue to work with the smaller, craft breweries so it doesn’t hurt so much,” Berceau said. Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:38:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25156&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25156&mname=Article By Jason Kopplin Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff November 2009 While many would consider video games mindless fun at best and a negative influence at worst, organizations such as Games, Learning, and Society (GLS), at UW-Madison are working to break that stereotype and explore the educational value of interactive media. Video games are the entertainment of choice for millions of people, young and old. GLS both studies mainstream commercial products as an emerging branch of liberal arts and works to develop educational software. GLS is also involved with a similar group at MIT as well as the National Academy of Science and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Their goal is to raise awareness of game study as a serious academic pursuit. Dr. Kurt Squire, a founding member of GLS said, “Ignoring games now would be like ignoring television in the 60s.” Mainstream culture in general is becoming more accepting of games as legitimate medium. Many schools now take advantage of educational games in their curriculum. Press Start to Begin GLS started at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2003. Dr. Squire is one of the founding members. “GLS started six years ago when I came to campus,” said Squire. “Even with just the three of us [founding members] interested in games and education, it was still one of the larger university groups in the country.” The group is an official part of the university, but the members have decided against starting a formal curriculum. Squire said they wanted to avoid the bureaucracy that would bring. As an official campus group, they can help graduate students interested in game study pursue their research while avoiding all the red tape. GLS, however, has members and goals beyond the world of academics. According to a statement on the group’s web site, “The Games, Learning, and Society group is a collection of academic researchers, interactive media (or game) developers, and government and industry leaders who investigate how this medium operates, how it can be used to transform how we learn, and what this means for society. As such we seek to understand what cognitive work goes into playing Zelda, World of Warcraft, or Civilization, how these design features might be leveraged to improve learning via the design of learning systems, and how organizations such as schools will need to respond.” Those partners include independent game studios such as Filament Games and Ice Cream Breakfast as well as major studios such as Raven Software. Dr. Squire works directly with Filament Games producing free educational titles. Making the Case for Games Squire and his colleagues argue that interactivity makes games a unique medium that encourages learning. Every game world has its own unique rules. Players must learn those rules and use them to overcome the obstacles the game presents. Whether the player realizes it or not, he or she is actively engaged in logic, critical thinking, and problem solving. Squire says those traits can be leveraged to engage students and get them to take an active role in the learning experience. “The logic of games is very different than school,” said Squire. “It’s self interest driven, allowing the player to actively engage and get what they want out of it. School is very one way. The information goes from the book, through the teacher, to the students.” Squire also said that games can provide more current information to students, especially through services like Microsoft’s Xbox Live or Sony’s PlayStation Network, which give users access to small, cheap games which can be purchased and downloaded immediately. “You could go straight to Xbox Live and download a game about stem cell research with current cutting edge information,” said Squire. “Textbooks take too long to catch up.” Out of the Bedroom, into the Classroom Games are already part of the classroom. Fourth graders at the Milwaukee Academy of science line up, eagerly awaiting their turn to use one of the classroom’s four computers after school to play games. “I don’t play the games to learn stuff,” said one student. “I play them because they’re fun.” But they are learning and the teachers are pleased with the results. Annie Westhouse, a teacher at the school uses games as part of her lesson plans. “Our math program actually has games that correspond with each lesson,” said Westhouse. “I’ll let the kids play with the games before the lesson to see if they can grasp the concepts we’ll be talking about. Even if they don’t, they will often make connections back to the game when I teach them the concepts. They’ll often shout out what we’re talking about is like the game they played. I’ll tell them no, it’s exactly like the game.” Faye Dumstree, another teacher at the school, agrees. “The games get them to pay attention,” said Dumstree. “If it’s a game, they get a sense of reward and they’ll try harder than on a typical assignment. They tend to think more about the consequences of their choices in games than they do in real life sometimes.” Big Plans In order to spread their message to teachers and facilitate serious academic study of games, GLS hosts an annual conference in Madison. The group will hold its 6th conference in June of next year. “There was a need for a conference not focused on the industry, something more academic,” said Squire. Filling that niche, the conference has grown every year. Next year, GLS expects more than 400 attendees over the three-day event. Squire recently returned from a conference of the National Academy of Science in Washington, DC. The meeting focused on the validity of gaming as an educational tool for the future. “When that report comes out, it’s going to be a big deal,” said Squire. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:40:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25006&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=25006&mname=Article By Jacob Schneider Staff Writer Frontpage Milwaukee Nov. 2, 2009 Since the dawn of the Napster era there has been widespread fear amongst music industry insiders that the record store as we know it today is on the path to becoming extinct. Similar to the way that journalists are forced to watch the newspaper industry fall into decline, record store owners have seen a rapid change in the way technology is being used to deliver music to the consumer in recent years. On the national scope, retail giants like Tower Records and several Virgin Megastores have been forced to close their doors in recent years, while Wal-Mart and iTunes constantly jockey for position as the world’s number one music retailer. When Atomic Records closed in March of 2009 after 24 years of business as Milwaukee’s premier record shop for audiophiles and crate diggers alike, the situation seemed especially dire. If Atomic could fail, what would that mean for the rest of Milwaukee’s record shops? Nine-year-old Brian Houchens, employee of The Exclusive Company on 1669 N Farewell Ave., says that things haven’t changed much in recent times. “It's not been that bad. At our store, CD sales were up over last year. A lot of people still come here to buy CDs. I don't think the store has had too many problems with the downloading, at least not in recent months.” With the economic recession in full swing, there has never been greater incentive for consumers to scale back their music spending by using the iTunes store (99 cents per song), or by resorting to piracy. Ways that songs are downloaded illegally. · Peer-to-peer file sharing services · Torrent sites · Blog site links Vinyl and the Music Nerd The record store’s saving grace looks to be the target consumer-group primarily interested in a hands on approach to discovering and purchasing music. Local musician and self-proclaimed “music nerd,” Trapper Schoepp says, “It’s the experience of going somewhere and getting a tangible piece of art that you can hold onto. Because some people really need that tangible product. You could get it online, you could get it for free, even steal it, but some people just really like going to support local businesses." Schoepp is not alone. Peak hours at The Exclusive Company run Monday through Friday around 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. right when people are getting out of work. Stop in during those times and expect to see some “High Fidelity” types browsing the aisles, looking new titles or that unexpected find with day-making potential. If these are the consumers keeping the industry alive, the question at hand is what items are they spending the most of their dollars on? The answer: Vinyl. Spin the Black Circle According to Geelong Advertiser, while physical CD sales are down across the board, vinyl sales have more than doubled in the past year, but so have digital album sales. So what can the music industry do to boost vinyl sales further, while the “now-generation” has access to digital music at its finger tips? Proponents of legal/illegal downloading often list time over money as the number one reason they shop digital. “For the most part, I don't listen to a lot of CDs anymore. I don't have a CD player in my car, and I don’t own a record player. If I'm going to get music I'm probably just going to get it online. It's just kind of a convenience factor,” said UWM student Jason Kopplin. This is why major labels are turning to deluxe packaging for releases (especially vinyl) to lure back a generation of consumers that had previously been their bread and butter. It’s not unusual for current physical releases to contain extra artwork, pamphlet literature, even bonus tracks that aren’t available in other formats. This year the Beastie Boys re-released their fifth studio album “Hello Nasty” (1998) with 21 bonus tracks. Essentially releasing an entire sister record of never before heard material along with the original. With physical CD sales are in the tank, and vinyl on the rise, Houchens says “I definitely see [vinyl] sales surpassing CD sales in the next couple years. A lot of the artists -- pretty much everybody is releasing on vinyl again. A lot of them give digital downloads or put a copy of the CD in with the vinyl for the mp3 players too. So, I definitely think after a while it's going to be pretty big again.” Even with all the extras that the labels are giving out to the consumer in these deluxe packages, re-issues, and box sets, it still doesn’t guarantee that the customer will buy the album from an independent record store instead of Wal-Mart or even Amazon.com. “Sure, I love reading the liner notes and all that stuff,” says Racine resident Nick Contreras. “I just don’t have the time in my work week to poke around the aisles of a record store, when I can have it sent to my house in a couple of days.” That’s not the mentality you will find at The Exclusive Company, Bullseye Records, Rush-Mor Records, or any local record store for that matter. The customers at these establishments carry a certain kind of loyalty; not necessarily to the establishment itself, but rather to the pastime of record shopping. If the American institution of the local record store stands to survive the digital movement, it needs to rely on the obsessive nature of the “music nerd.” Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:09:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24781&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24781&mname=Article Pewaukee Game Crazy Closing by Jason Kopplin Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff Oct. 26, 2009 Game Crazy, a national retail chain specializing in new and used video games, is closing 200 of its stores in the coming weeks, including its Pewaukee location. "Movie Gallery, Inc. is currently operating in an unprecedented consumer/retail environment,” stated Game Crazy's parent company in a press release. “In order for us to continue to best serve our millions of customers across North America we're addressing under performing stores and ensuring that there is sufficient [return on investment] associated with each of these stores going forward. The vast majority of our stores will be unaffected by these efforts." The Game Crazy at 1242 Capitol Dr. in Pewaukee is among those 200 stores closing. Huge banners outside read “This store closing. Everything must go.” The store shares a building with Hollywood Video. Movie Gallery, inc. owns both chains and often places both stores together. Almost every Game Crazy is located inside a Hollywood Video. Customers and Employees Affected According to Assistant Manager Myke Prohoska, word came down from corporate about two weeks ago their location would be closed on October 26. “Some of us will transfer,” said Prohaska. “The store managers get new stores. Pretty much everyone else lost their jobs.” Prohaska said there hasn't been much of an uptick in sales since the clearance sales started, but that's because the location already has high traffic. He did say, however, they have seen some new clientele. “The sale started at 30 percent,” Prohaska said. “It's been all over the internet that sales might go as high as 80 percent. We have people coming in here throwing fits expecting to see those huge discounts.” Jim Ybarra was a regular Game Crazy customer. He would come to the Pewaukee store to buy used games for his son. When asked where he would shop after the store closed, he responded, “That's a good question; I have no idea.” Ybarra said without a used games store in the area, he would likely wait for sales at Wal-Mart. “It's disappointing,” said Ybarra. “But what are you going to do?” Prohoska is also sad to see his store closing. “It was a popular store in the area, too,” said Prohoska. “We had a lot of regular customers that were just heartbroken about it. But the good news is, after the holidays, they'll be looking to put something back in the area.” Big Plans for the Future After closing 200 stores this year, Game Crazy plans to open 100 new stores by the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2010. These new locations will be standalone stores in lieu of the back corner of the video store. Many Game Crazy stores opened in the 90s and now have a dated aesthetic of chain link fences on the walls and a color scheme consisting of bright purple and neon green. The new stores will have a look reminiscent of an Apple Store with a clean, elegant, and modern style. The company decided to close a portion of its existing stores only to later open new locations later due to cash flow considerations. The new games market operates on very thin profit margins. A large portion of all video game sales occurs over the holiday season, when most major titles are released. The highly anticipated title “Modern Warfare 2” comes out next month. The game is on pace to be the highest grossing entertainment release of all time. The title currently belongs to “Grand Theft Auto IV”. Stocking that much inventory ties up resources. Movie Gallery stated it is closing select stores to free up funds for the launch of the new standalone stores. If assets were tied up in stocking the stores scheduled to close, the new store would have been delayed significantly. Traditionally, Game Stop was the only other national chain involved in the lucrative used games business. Recently, however, Toys R Us, Best Buy, and Amazon.com have entered the used games business. Best Buy also started a pilot program offering to price match new games at Game Crazy and Game Stop’s used prices. Most new games sell for $60. Depending on the popularity of title, it can stay as high as $55 used for weeks or months after release. “Killzone 2” released almost a year ago and still goes used for $50 at used game stores. Customers trading in “Killzone 2” only receive about $25 in store credit for the game though. Those healthy profit margins are shrinking for specialty stores like Game Crazy as larger retailers get on board. Game Crazy is also closing its Stevens Point location. All other Wisconsin stores will reamin open. There are Game Crazy stores at 1312 W Historic Mitchell St. in Milwaukee and 6804 W National Ave. in West Allis. Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:51:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24697&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24697&mname=Article Getting Through the Winter By Jessica Gaskey Oct. 19, 2009 Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff Some UW-Milwaukee students brave the cold this fall as long as they can to avoid heating bills during a time of recession. With low temperatures outside already hitting Milwaukee this fall, UWM students are ready to turn on their heaters to be more comfortable at home – but they aren’t all doing it. That’s because some students are not ready to pay the heating bill. Many students who don’t have heat included in their apartments or duplexes said that they would have turned the heat on by now. They know how high the bill can get and decided it is one thing they are just going to have to live without for a while. If students cannot afford to pay their bill even in the winter months, Wisconsin provides heating assistance programs to accommodate many homes. Students are changing their lifestyles during the economic downturn and coming up with different ways to keep themselves warm and save some money on the heating bill. Time for Heat UWM Senior Jen Pankoff sits in the 8th Note Coffee House in The Union curled up on a couch with her coffee close to her face. The steam rises from the open and she looks down and grins. The weather today is a cold wind that burns the faces of incoming students in The Union. The gray sky and frost bitten wet grass. Students look underdressed in their sweatshirts and some with open toes on a day where snowfall is predicted. Pankoff hasn’t turned her heat on yet at her apartment in Oak Creek, but thinks today would be a good day to turn it on. She said that she’s not ready to deal with that yet. “It’s not so bad during the day when you are moving around a lot but when you’re trying to fall asleep you wish you had heat,” says Pankoff.“And then when I wake up in the morning, I don’t want to get out of bed and start doing stuff at home when it’s this cold.” Wisconsin Strives to Help On the Wisconsin Home Energy Assistance Program (WHEAP) website, http://homeenergyplus.wi.gov/category.asp?linkcatid=239&linkid=118, Wisconsin residents can apply to make plans for co-payments, or they pay a portion of heating costs. WHEAP assists about 160,000 homes per year. The benefits to this assistance program vary by the size of the household, heating costs and income. With the recession, state legislation has recently changed the income guidelines, making more residents eligible. What Will Students Do? Senior at UWM Alma Villasenor sits in The Union across from Tina Mayor. They have their heads in their Spanish books slouched on a table with determined faces. Alma looks out the large open cold window next to the high tables and yawns. Villasenor does not have plans yet to turn her heat on, but finds ways to stay comfortable in her home. “When I’m at home, I carry around my little space heater and set it down on the nearest table in whatever room I’m in,” says Villasenor. “It’s hard to concentrate on my homework, when I just want to feel nice and cozy.” Sophomore at UWM Tina Mayor has a different approach to staying warm. “I drink a lot of green tea while I’m at home studying to keep my body temperature up,” Mayor says. “A lot Coffee keeps me warm too but it doesn’t help me stay warm when I’m trying to fall asleep.” Waiting until winter will save students some money but until then students are staying warm through: Shutting the doors in the room they are occupying Opening blinds to let some in during the day Wearing winter clothes outside and sweatshirts inside Using a space heater as opposed to heating the entire home (these can be a potential fire hazard) Using heat pads and electric blankets when sleeping sp Besides these ways of staying warm without turning on the heat, the Alliance to Save Energy gives ways to conserve energy and lower the cost of heating bills on their website, http://ase.org/content/article/detail/924. High heating bills will plague students in the winter months but can be reduced through changing sealing leaks and insulating your windows or other potential cold spots. Senior at UWM Michael Patek also has not turned his heat on yet. He lives with a couple of roommates and is waiting to see who will budge first into turning on the heat. I don’t know,” says Patek “I will probably just come home one day from school late at night without even thinking about it twice, and turn my heater on before I go to bed. Once it’s on, it will stay on through the winter. You can’t just turn it on once.” Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:16:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24641&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24641&mname=Article Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, stars and creators of Comedy Central's new hit "Michael and Michael Have Issues," are in Milwaukee to perform at Turner Hall Ballroom as part of the Michael and Michael Have Live Tour. Earlier this afternoon, Paul Imig sat down with the two to discuss the idea behind "Michael and Michael Have Issues," new episodes coming up next season, their current tour, working together once again (they previously worked together on "Stella," "The State," and Wet Hot American Summer) and Showalter's favorite guest on his online talk show, "The Michael Showalter Showalter." You can catch the guys live tonight, Wednesday, October 14 at Turner Hall Ballroom, located at 1032 N. 4th Street.<p> Comedy Central’s Michael and Michael Have Issues hits Milwaukee By: Paul Imig October, 13, 2009 After the successful debut season of Comedy Central’s Michael and Michael Have Issues, Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter are taking their act on the road with their first tour in support of the show. The tour, Michael and Michael Have Live Tour, is stopping in Milwaukee on Wednesday, October 14, as part of the multi-city standup tour that also features stops in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and more. Tomorrow afternoon, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student Paul Imig sits down with Black and Showalter, the stars and creators of the show, to discuss everything that is Michael and Michael. You can see the video interview in its entirety late Wednesday afternoon right here on Frontpage Milwaukee, then head to Turner Hall Ballroom for their live performance. You may also know Black and Showalter from previous work together, including The State, Stella, and Wet Hot American Summer. If you missed season 1 of Michael and Michael Have Issues on Comedy Central this summer, they will be re-airing starting October 21. Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:55:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24591&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24591&mname=Article By Staci Staffaroni Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff Oct. 13, 2009 Andy Warhol: The Last Decade His is a name almost synonymous with Pop Art, Warhol. During his last decade of his life, he produced more work than he ever completed during his previous 30 years as an artist. Now, that last decade of work has arrived in Milwaukee. The exhibit, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade, is making its premiere in Milwaukee. The exhibit runs from Sept. 26 through Jan. 3. Following its premiere at the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) the exhibit will head on a national tour. MAM After Dark The exhibit previewed on Friday September 25 at a MAM After Dark event. (http://www.mam.org/afterdark/) A record 1,664 attended to get a sneak preview before the exhibit officially opened. That attendance is a record for all MAM After Dark events since the event started in October 2008, according to Jonas Wittke, Community Relations Manager at MAM. “The show has been in the works for nearly three years now, it started under former Chief Curator, Joseph Ketner, and was finalized under current Art Director Daniel Keegan,” said John McKinnon, Assistant Curator of modern and contemporary art at MAM. The Exhibition On Saturday October 3 the exhibit was filled with museumgoers as a line waited outside to enter. The exhibit opens with many darker pieces. You will not see the brightly colored products or film stars you that would expect from Warhol. Self-portrait with Skull is an almost sinister-looking black, gray, and red double-sided portrait of Warhol with a skull atop his head. Many pieces in the first room show self-reflection. As you move past the shadowy and murky darker pieces, most of which feature skulls you find yourself in more familiar “Warhol” territory. Marilyn is done, but as if it were painted in the dark monochromatically. The next room makes a transition to much brighter pieces. One such piece is Yarn. Yarn, 1983, is reminiscent of a Pollock, but if he had used a ball of yarn. Then, there is Origin of Cotton, 1984, which seems like a bright, convoluted roadmap to abstraction…faces peak at you from one corner as bright, white rectangles house words or just letters as they draw your attention to the center, before you move to the opposite corner covered in blood red. One of the largest pieces, Untitled (50 dentures), 1983, keeps in theme with the skulls. The abstract dentures, some with bright yellow decay, sit as a dreary gray drips behind them. Pieces from the latter half of the last decade incorporate more color. In Warhol’s “Fright-Wig”, series the artist stares back at you in brightly colored self-portraits with intense eyes and a slightly parted mouth. The exhibit closes with an obvious focus on religion. It is spiritual, but with actual color instead of washed-out pastels. It is abstraction including religion as you view Warhol’s version of The Last Supper. Several strategically placed small, late-model televisions sit outside the exhibit where you can view Warhol’s screen tests…behind them his infamous words “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Warhol shot hours of screen tests on both famous and lesser-known individuals on the premise that “everyone was a star.” After exiting the exhibit store some sat at benches to take it all in. “It was amazing, I feel fortunate for having seen it,” said Xiong Zu, an exchange student studying at Marquette. Milwaukee Partnerships and Praise McKinnon indicated that since the show has been in the works for several years, it was not scheduled to coincide with any other Milwaukee events; however, MAM is now working with local organizations. “MAM has partnered with other organizations, such as the upcoming LGBT Film Festival, to provide a robust look at Warhol,” said McKinnon. Academia is also involved in the show. Peck School of the Arts students at the University of WI-Milwaukee (UWM) can view the exhibit at no charge. Due to a segregated fee included in their tuition, they receive free admission to MAM and all exhibits. UWM Art History Professor Jeffrey Hayes considers the Warhol exhibit a valuable show, “because Warhol’s work is often too narrowly pigeon-holed [in terms of time and consumer culture]”. Hayes added, I believe his interests ranged more widely and divulge a stronger critical and intellectual dimension than is often acknowledged. This becomes especially apparent during his last decade, which of course is the focus of this particular exhibition.” Although the professor has not seen the exhibition yet, he said he hopes to see it soon. Many others share the professor’s sentiment. Ben Tyjeski, a UWM art student also said he has not seen the exhibit yet, but is “excited and cannot wait!” Pop Art was not always so bright In 1968, the artist was shot and survived. It was said at the time the artist was quoted as saying, “I wish I had died.” This was long before he went on to become the most iconic figure of the Pop Art movement in America. Ironically, one year earlier, in 1967, the Milwaukee Art Museum had acquired its first pieces of Warhol’s work. On acquiring this exhibit, Keegan “took the helm in some major fundraising efforts to make sure this show happened. This show has a lot of very difficult loans to obtain, and works that are taken off their stretchers,” said McKinnon. Meaningful for Milwaukee The exhibit premiering in Milwaukee is receiving a warm welcome. Many have already attended during the first week of the show. “The show has been very successful. It has been a big coup for Milwaukee ... When it reaches the Brooklyn Museum, it will be the biggest museum exhibition of Warhol's work in New York within the last 20 years,” concluded McKinnon. To learn more about the Warhol exhibit or other upcoming exhibits at MAM please visit: http://www.mam.org Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:47:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24585&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24585&mname=Article UW-Milwaukee student Paul Imig conducts video interviews at Marcus Amphitheater events Visit http://www.youtube.com/paulinterviews to see more and leave comments Fall Out Boy (at Blink 182 show) 3OH!3 (at Warped Tour) All Time Low (at Warped Tour) Forever the Sickest Kids (at Warped Tour) Senses Fail (at Warped Tour) Kevin Lyman (founder of Warped Tour) Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:04:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24504&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=24504&mname=Article SELF BRANDING THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA By Sean McGraw Of the Frontpage Milwaukee staff 2009 MILWAUKEE – Self-branding via social media was the main point stressed in the “New Age Networking” presentation hosted by Spreenkler, a social media and design agency, at UWM on Friday. Spreenkler hosted the modestly attended presentation in UWM Union Room 240 on Friday, April 24th and featured demonstrations on how to use different forms of social media to better prepare and market a person to potential employers in the declining job market. “Self branding is something that I like to think about as taking you as a name and as an individual and packaging it as a brand and launching that brand out into the market place, how do you go about doing that?” said Bill Bensman, the social media campaign coordinator at Spreenkler, “What methods, what marketing channels do you use to promote that brand which is yourself, so to speak?” The demonstration consisted of slides that featured social media cites such as Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, and Twitter.com. With each slide, Bensman dissected the site featured and pointed out ways to utilize its features to help make a site look more professional and attractive to employers. Spreenkler is an interactive and social media and design agency that helps to train and retain college talent in the Milwaukee region. It began as a monthly meet-up of individuals exchanging ideas in 2007 and, in 2009, it launched its creative services agency. The social media sites that were featured were • LinkedIn.com – billed as a Facebook.com for professionals • Facebook.com – 35 – 60-year-olds is the largest growing demographic on this site • Twitter.com – has 11 million new members in the last month and a projected 15 million new members by the end of next month • Meetup.com – a great resource to meet up with new people especially if you are just graduating • Flickr.com – a great resource for online creative portfolio managing • Blog – the blog is the focal point for all of your social media networking What employers are looking for Bensman said that employers are looking for candidates who are well rounded and keep up with the latest trends. He also said that perspective employers would like to see if a candidate has presence on multiple social media sites. He recommended that students have presence on Facebook.com and Twitter.com and, if they are indeed looking for a career, LinkedIn.com would be a great resource. Bensman estimated that hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses are branching out into the realm of social media. He stressed that it is important to make these types of social connections, saying, “With the job market flooded, it’s good to know somebody.” “I think the LinkedIn.com is very good,” said Josh Konkel, a student graduating in May with a degree in Advertising. “Also the Carbonmade.com and Flickr.com which allows me to post my portfolio being a creative online. It’s easier for potential employers to find rather than me sending jpegs through the email.” What the sites should have Bensman said it’s ok to still keep personal things on these networking sites such as pictures with friends as well as interests and hobbies, but that people also need to keep in mind just who is going to be looking at the sites. “Just try to join as many networks that are of interest to you and remain authentic on those sites, provide true information,” said Bensman, “market yourself in a way that an employer can easily access you and see what you’re all about.” A presence on social media will not negatively affect a person looking for employment Bensman estimated. “Not having presence on social media is not going to hurt.” Bensman said. Bensman claimed that the advantage of having presence on the social media networking sites is to make connections and to differentiate oneself from everybody else. Bensman also said that these networking sites are an easy way for a person to promote that self-brand that employers are looking for and that these sites will help take a potential job candidate “to the next level.” Spreenkler Spreenkler is headquartered at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, located at 1340 N. 6th St. They still hold monthly networking meet-ups that consist of idea sharing on topics ranging from design, sustainability and innovation. These meet-ups also contain a featured speaker who gives a presentation and interacts with the group. Throughout the meeting, there are opportunities for attendees to share their ideas, receive feedback, and get to know others who share their passion for creative work. The next meet-up will be held on May 6th at 5:30 p.m. at the Bucketworks facility. “The more information I can get from [Spreenkler], the better,” said Olivia Johnson, a junior at UWM. “It showed me the right direction to go in to help me network myself. I’m a junior, so I have to start thinking about those things.” Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:06:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23557&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23557&mname=Article Tourism and Money By Marc Stefaniac Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff 2009 MILWAUKEE- The Greater Milwaukee area, as a whole, has not dropped prices in order to better accommodate tourists during the economic crisis with some exceptions, according to Vice President of Public Relations at Visit Milwaukee David Fantle and Vice President of Retail and Corporate Services Debra Usinger. According to David Fantle, Milwaukee is a “value destination,” meaning regular prices in Milwaukee are cheap compared to other cities, so Milwaukee does not have to lower prices. Usinger’s is one place currently that is trying to help people with discounts on certain items, but many businesses are not dropping prices. According to Visit Milwaukee, Milwaukee ranked 60th least expensive out of 69 major cities on the Runzheimer Meal and Lodging report. Also, Visit Milwaukee said Runzheimer International ranked Milwaukee the most affordable city for lodging and food compared to other cities that compete for visitors. The main source of income for Visit Milwaukee and Usinger’s is businesspeople. “We market the city for meetings and conventions,” Fantle said. “Bringing people in, having them book large blocks of rooms in our hotels, and spend a lot of money, that’s the main idea.” A “Value Destination” The hospitality and tourism industry has been hit hard by the recession that the country is currently in. According to Fantle, hotel occupancy now compared to the same period last year is down somewhere in the 15 percent range. With the drop in hotel occupancy, other businesses have a drop off as well because not as many people are coming into the city and spending money, Fantle said. Yet, Fantle is optimistic with the city in and out of the recession. “I would say we are faring comparatively well in the recession,” Fantle said. “I think we’re always well-conditioned to do well when we emerge from this recession.” The reason for the optimism may have to do with the state being a “value destination.” According to Fantle, Hotwire.com named Milwaukee in its top 10 “2008 Best Places for Value Vacations. Unlike Las Vegas, Milwaukee’s pricing is consistent, Fantle said. “Right now a $65 room in Vegas was a $265 room a year ago,” Fantle said. As soon as they can get back to $265 they’ll go for it, whereas Milwaukee has always been more of a steady shift.” Although Fantle said most businesses stay consistent with their pricing during bad times, Fred Usinger Inc. does something unique. Sausage Stimulus The old brown building next to the Milwaukee River and located on Old World 3rd Street, is one of the most famous sausage companies in the country. Usinger’s sells items ranging from bratwurst to knackwurst to ring bologna. Usinger’s is trying to help people who are struggling by promoting what they call the “Sausage Stimulus Package.” “On a regular basis, we are giving super special prices on certain seconds items, and we make up a little flier that we have published in the store that probably changes weekly,” Usinger said. The seconds’ items contain food that may have a bump in it, or it contains food that was over ordered and is therefore sold at a lesser cost. Some examples of the deals are listed below with the first price being the second’s item, and the second price being the normal price. 1.) Brats $1.89 a pound $3.89 a pound 2.) Wieners $2.79 a pound $4.19 a pound 3.) Summer sausage $2.39 a pound $4.19 a pound 4.) Knackwurst $2.59 a pound $4.09 a pound 5.) Ring bologna $2.59 a pound $3.89 a pound Usinger’s can change the price for seconds’ items, but the company cannot change its basic normal price. “It is still costing us what it costs to manufacture the product and all those other types of things,” Usinger said. Targeting Businesspeople Sitting down at a restaurant alone with an ice cold beer with him, St. Louis resident Jim Waters is struggling during the recession. “I sell equipment to the steel industry, and the steel industry is really down because of the automotives and everything else,” Waters said. As a result of struggling, Waters only came up to Wisconsin for two things: a museum and business. “I have two customers up here,” Waters said. Usinger’s and Visit Milwaukee get a lot of business from businesspeople like Waters. “A lot of times we get a lot of people that are in town for conventions,” Usinger said. Surprisingly the business in the Usinger’s store is up for the year by almost 25 percent, according to Usinger. A way in which Usinger’s has tried to reach customers from out of state, especially businesspeople, is by running more ads. “We did a series of ads telling of different hot specials that would be attractive to get people to come into our retail store,” Usinger said. Why the focus on businesspeople? According to Fantle, meetings and conventions are things Visit Milwaukee can track, whereas the leisure visitor cannot be tracked. Visit Milwaukee also gets its funding from people who visit the city and stay in the hotels, who are mainly in Milwaukee for meetings or conventions. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:04:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23556&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23556&mname=Article Spreenkler Social Media Workshop By Lyndsay Thomas Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff 2009 Twitter, Facebook, Myspace…Social media finds itself taking over. Spreenkler, a social networking agency, works to use these sites to lead college students in the right direction, in this converging media world. Spreenkler creates opportunities for students to be a part of this ever growing media field. Their monthly meetings help students know what resources are out there and how to use them. The Milwaukee region is looking to grow and Spreenkler wants to retain fresh, young students to be ready to launch their careers here, in their own backyard around Wisconsin. The economy in a whole, has affected students in many regions. However, Spreenkler looks to use social media networking to brand students for a future employer. Spreenkler looked at many networking sites from the ever so popular Facebook, to the underground Meetup.com. Sara Gehl, director of marketing and client services at Spreenkler, hopes students use the resources and knowledge that Spreenkler is willing to give them. Gehl said, “Spreenkler is about retaining talent in the city of Milwaukee and hiring college students to give them real world experience working with clients around the Milwaukee region. That’s our main goal, our main mission and because we are knowledgeable in social media, we just want to help out students as much as we can to launch their careers, so it’s a no brainer for us. Spreenkler held a social media workshop in Union 240 at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee on Friday April 24th at 1 p.m. Spreenkler holds monthly meetings to let students know how to social network through media outlets. Spreenkler, which consists of four employees, introduced many social networking sites at their workshop. Spreenkler’s job is to use social media strategies and web-design techniques to better their client base. They look to retain college students who are tech-savvy and creatively, fresh to help better their clients and future clients. Sites Introduced: • Twitter • Facebook • Meetup.com • LinkedIn • Flickr • Youtube Dawn Zimmerman, a recent UWM graduate and now lead creative designer for Spreenkler, said, “We’re trying to grow the business here, so people don’t have to go to Chicago, New York, San Francisco. I mean when I was looking for a job, I was looking in Miami and was looking in places elsewhere but I found a job at Spreenkler because they’re trying to help people, it just kind of affects everything.” Spreenkler explained sites such as Twitter and Facebook that use blogs and micro-blogging. They are used as marketing tools. Facebook, which is used by many as a more informal way to connect with friends and family can play a dual role in networking. Bill Benson, Social Media Campaign Coordinator at Spreenkler said, “Step your game up, use it as a dual purpose, for friends and networking.” However, they did mention to “revamp” it if you want a future employer to look at it. Photos, interests, and email are aspects that need to be formal. Meetup.com, which is free to sign up, they described this as more an under the radar social media network. There are over three hundred and thirty nine professionals on meetup.com. This site lets people know about meetings around certain area. Milwaukee career networkers are on Meetup.com, where they look for well rounded students who take charge. Flickr and Carbonmade, which are both sites where you can store photos and Youtube, a video sharing website, were brought up when talking about creative, social networking. Flickr and Carbonmade let people build and manage an online portfolio. It also helps to build a network with other creatives. Spreenkler also mentioned Youtube.com as a creative outlet. Video resumes are slowly starting to surface. Youtube lets people put up their video resume. Benson said, “It just depends if you are comfortable in front of a camera.” Read More Madison Seitz, a senior at UWM, attended the workshop. Seitz said, “It was definitely very informative. I am on Facebook and Myspace and I’m starting to get into Twitter but I’m not very familiar with it so it was really helpful with getting to know about meetup.com and more about Twitter and other social networking sites.” The economy has put a damper on many recent and upcoming graduates’ dreams. Finding a job can be difficult right now. Seitz also said, “I want as much experience as I can get going into the field, with the economy as it is, you kind of want to be really well rounded going into this.”. Spreenkler continues to hold monthly networking meetings. Business people, accountants, artists, and students join Spreenkler at their office at Bucketworks on 1340 N. 6th Street in downtown Milwaukee. For information about more social networking sites or networking meetings, email Spreenkler or visit their website at www.spreenkler.com. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:02:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23554&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23554&mname=Article By Crystal Lewis Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff 2009 Wisconsin Home Energy Assistance Program (WHEAP) as the state sees a 32 percent increase in the number of heat assistance applications in one year, but is not receiving any funding from the stimulus package. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle created the Office of Recovery and Reinvestment, with Madison Gas and Electric CEO and President Gary J. Wolter as the office head. The Office of Recovery and Reinvestment is responsible for allocating the estimated $2.018 million dollars that Wisconsin is expecting to receive from The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The most recent draft includes funding to various entities such as education, housing, and transportation. There is no funding for energy assistance however. As winter comes to a close, and We Energies begins to disconnect the power of individuals with delinquent and past due balances, hundreds of people can be seen standing outside the Social Development Commission to apply for energy assistance. The current economic downturn seems to have had an effect on the number of applicants this year. Over the past year, the number of crisis benefits paid out has risen 4.5 percent during Oct. 1, 2008 - Apr. 27, 2009, up from the same time period the year before. Including both crisis and regular energy assistance, there has been a 9.4 percent increase in applicants and a 23.8 percent increase in benefits paid out, both for crisis and regular energy assistance, according to SDC. Although the energy assistance program is not receiving any stimulus money, weatherization is receiving some of the stimulus money. The Program WHEAP is a program that assists low income individuals pay their annual energy bills. Funding from the federal government is used to help applicants who fall within a certain income bracket according to household size. The amount of money provided to help homes with their energy bills depends on the household income level as well as heating costs according to Pray. Through WHEAP, SDC also offers crisis grants. These grants are provided to households whose power was disconnected or is in threat of being disconnected. Wisconsin’s Home Energy Assistance Programs is offered through two different agencies, the Social Development Commission and Community Advocates. SDC handles the majority of the energy assistance applicants. WHEAP case workers handle appointments, all of the walk-ins, and do case management says Pray. The Social Development Commission accepts a limited number of applications each day during the Energy Assistance Season that runs from October1-May 15 of each year. Although the season spans over the course of seven months, case workers at the Social Development Commission see unusually high periods of traffic at certain times. During these times, hundreds of applicants stand outside SDC sites throughout Milwaukee County to receive energy assistance. Tara Pray is the Energy Assistant Program Manager for SDC, and oversees the energy assistance program in Milwaukee County. “During the peak times, which are before the We Energies moratorium begins November 15…,we are really, really busy up until when the moratorium kicks in.” The moratorium, is the designated energy shut-off time. Tara Pray, whose office in located at the SDC on Richards and Capitol, says that winters are steady, but they wish they were busier. Pray says that unfortunately a lot of clients wait until the last minute to apply for energy assistance and that is why they get the long lines outside the building. At the Richard’s location, SDC case workers see about 160-180 people a day, which is normal for this part of the season. These people receive numbers in order to schedule an appointment that is based on a first come, first serve basis. There are morning number as well as evening numbers says Pray. She says that they try to hand out the numbers early, so that applicants will know whether or not they will be able to be seen that day. Stimulus Although there is no funding allocated for WHEAP, there is funding set aside for weatherization. Weatherization is a service where contractors come in and perform an energy audit. Based on the information relating to energy efficiency, clients may be eligible to receive services such as: insulation, sealing of leaks, heating systems updates and other energy efficient services. A list of applicants who qualify for weatherization, are taken from those who apply for energy assistance. The two services often go hand in hand, as you must first apply for energy assistance in order to receive weatherization says Victor Montgomery. Victor Montgomery, SDC’s Weatherization Program Manager says he does not know why there is not any funding from the stimulus money set aside for WHEAP. Montgomery says the stimulus money was produced to help and employ people and energy assistance is already helping people. Victoria Smith is a second time energy assistance applicant, and says the stimulus money would be better used towards energy assistance, not just weatherization. “I think it should go towards energy assistance…we need the heat. We don’t need windows, we need heat.” According to Wisconsin’s Office of Recovery and Reinvestment, weatherization is expected to receive $ 141,502,133 in funding from the stimulus money, although it is not definite, as new drafts are created often. Crisis Angela Roberson stood outside of SDC’s Richards location in seek of crisis energy assistance for her grandmother. She says crisis is the worst situation you can get to. “This is like my second time, says Roberson, the first time I came for myself, this time I’m coming for my grandmother.” Whether or not crisis is the worst you can get, the number of energy assistance applications have increased says Pray, although SDC won’t receive the final numbers until the end of the season. Options Aside from energy assistance, SDC does offer other resources to aid the public in dealing with the rising costs of energy. SDC offers counseling for conserving energy and also assists clients with energy budgets. SDC also works with the client as well as the We Energies in order to arrange pro-active co payment plans, before a client’s situation escalates to a need or crisis situation. Pray says that SDC tries to equip clients with the tools they need to make some smarter decisions with the income they have. “We have anybody who has a bill greater that $3,000 talk to a case manager and also do an educational workshop with us that focus on energy conservation in the home as well as budget counseling and basic financial literacy.” WHEAP also provide appointments for clients who work full time and also making special accommodations to home bound and handicapped individuals. Pray, says that SDC tries to provide proactive assistance, so that clients are better able to handle their annual bill. The best time to apply for energy assistance, is between Thanksgiving and St. Patrick’s Day, says Pray. During those times, she says you don’t have to stand in the long lines and you can usually get in and out within a half hour. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:52:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23549&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23549&mname=Article By Caitlin Penzey Moog of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff 2009 Indoor tanning is a popular way to look bronzed in the depths of a Milwaukee winter, but comes with serious health risks often unknown or ignored by indoor tanners. Ultimate Sun, a tanning salon on 3124 N. Downer Ave., is a popular indoor tanning destination for UWM students. Here owner Sini Skodras ushers in an average of 420 patrons a day in the wintertime, a clientele largely made of UWM students. Frontpagemilwaukee spoke to student patrons of Ultimate Sun to get a feel for the sentiment regarding the health risks associated with indoor tanning by those who tan. The overall response was one of little or no concern. The intense UVA rays of a tanning bed are what make indoor tanning especially dangerous, says UWM health educator Colleen Bernstein. Last year the American Academy of Dermatology began the “Indoor Tanning is Out” campaign to spread awareness of the health risks of indoor tanning. Indoor tanning’s largest promoter is the Indoor Tanning Association, a powerful organization whose mission statement includes working with federal, and state governments to ensure that the tanning is not restricted. Restriction of indoor tanning comes in the form of state legislation that prohibits the use of tanning beds by minors. “I know indoor tanning is bad, but I want to look good now and if I don’t look good when I’m 60, I’m okay with that,” says student and tanner Jane Smith in response to the associated health risks. Ultimate Sun “UWM girls and boys are a big part of my clientele,” says Skodras, the owner of Ultimate Sun. Skodras believes in the good of a fake tan but is still strict with the 24-hour wait policy, part of a state law that does not allow a person to tan more than once a day. “Everything’s good in moderation, obviously, so if you overdo something it’s just not good and that’s why they implemented the 24-hour wait policy,” Skodras says. This is part of her effort to promote healthy tanning. Ultimate Sun provides spray tanning as well as the tanning beds, something that she recommends to fair-skinned people who burn easily. Aside from that, “there’s so many benefit’s of tanning,” she says. “The whole vitamin D factor is amazing and you can control the amount of time you are exposed so you don’t burn. Because that’s the goal: not to burn, and to get tan.” The Health Risks Skodras glossed over the more serious health risks of indoor tanning, saying that, like tanning outside, it needs to be done in moderation. Heath educator Bernstein, on the other hand, says tanning, especially indoor tanning, is never safe. “Any tan is a sign of skin damage,“ she says. “It’s hard to believe that anything so innocuous could be something so potentially dangerous, but it’s over your lifetime.” Bernstein says the UVA rays are especially strong in a tanning bed because of how intense they are on or inches away from unprotected skin. UVA rays are more penetrating than UVB rays, can damage the immune system, and are responsible for the appearance of aging tremendously over a person’s lifetime, she says. The radiation of tanning bed use has been declared a carcinogen by the National Institutes of Health. Bernstein’s take on vitamin D is that people don’t need to go into a tanning salon to get it in the winter. “You only need five to ten minutes a day of sun to get vitamin D,” she says. “And you can get that, and you should, in part, from a multi-dose vitamin.” The paradox is that tanning makes a person feel good about their appearance now, but the cumulative effects cause one to look much older than he or she really is when they hit midlife, Bernstein explains. The Indoor Tanning Association says that indoor tanning provides a base coat and is a sunburn prevention measure. But according to the Mayo Clinic’s website, “tanning under the sun or a sunlamp gives protection that is equivalent to a sun protection factor (SPF) of 4 or less, which translates into a little extra time in the sun before you start to burn.” So indoor tanning does help prevent sunburn, but only a tiny bit. Indoor Tanners Some tanners, like UWM student Molly Sullivan, go tanning for a specific reason. She is getting married in August and goes tanning every other day so she doesn’t have tan lines when wearing her strapless dress. Others, like Brianna Weldon, also a UWM student, tan indoors to look bronzed come summer time. “You can go to the beach during the summer and get the same risks so I don’t think [tanning indoors] is that different from tanning [outside].” she said. Dan, a UWM student who didn’t want his last name disclosed, says he is aware of the health risks of indoor tanning, but the hazards fall under a wide range of unhealthy things he does. “We do a lot of things that aren’t necessarily the greatest for us long term,” says Dan about himself and his fellow students. “We drink, smoke, stay up too late, drink too much caffeine, a lot of things that are going to come back and bite us.” The Indoor Tanning Association The Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) is an industry trade group representing bed tanning salons, manufacturers, and distributors as well as makers of spray-on tanning products. The ITA lobbies government officials in regards to prohibitive tanning legislature. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that collects data on money’s influence in elections, the ITA contributed a total of $22,500 to 12 federal candidates in 2008. This data was released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on March 02, 2009. The ITA is also sponsors media campaigns to inform the public on their stance of indoor tanning. In May 2008 the American Academy of Dermatology began the “Indoor Tanning is Out” campaign to spread awareness of the health risks of indoor tanning. “Indoor tanning before the age of 35 has been associated with a significant increase in the risk of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer,” the Academy said in a statement. “Yet, more than one million Americans - 70 percent of which are girls and women, primarily 16 to 29 years old - visit a tanning salon on an average day.” In response the ITA began a campaign of their own, calling the “Indoor Tanning is Out” as “smear campaign against the millions of Americans who enjoy the benefits of tanning” and saying there is no decreased risk of melanoma skin cancer by avoiding tanning. State Laws Twenty-six states have prohibitive indoor tanning laws. Wisconsin Code Ann. § 255.08 (9)(a) states that a person must be 16 or over to use indoor tanning facilities. Wisconsin, Illinois, and Texas are the only states that forbid tanning of minors; other states require parent’s permission for their children to use tanning beds, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. However, the American Cancer Society found in a 2004 study that state laws are ineffective in controlling minors from indoor tanning. Despite the laws, indoor tanning practices continue to increase in America. But as the popularity increases, so does the demand for stronger legislation to prohibit indoor tanning. Twenty states introduced new legislation in 2009. In the meantime, Ultimate Sun on Downer continues to see hundreds of people pass through the doors a day, something that will continue in Wisconsin for the time being. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:48:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23546&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23546&mname=Article By Amanda Schenkenberger Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff, 2009 Milwaukee, WI- By now most people have heard of the highly publicized issue of minors exchanging explicit photos through text messaging, but it turns out they aren’t the only ones engaging in this modern form of expression-college students admit they too are guilty of “sexting.” “Sexting,” the term coined by the media to refer to the exchange of explicit photos by way of text messaging, has been a controversial issue across the country among students, parents, and even lawmakers. Local Milwaukee area cases have resulted in criminal charges for the offense and even stamped one high school student as a registered sex offender for the rest of his life. The act of sexting among consenting adults, however, does not leave parties involved labeled sex offenders. In fact, students on UW-Milwaukee’s campus were willing to dish out a few details about their views on the act of sexting among adults, and why it seems to have become so popular. Freshman Nate Berman says we are very conservative in our country’s culture as far as our bodies, and that sexting is more of a product of our times. “It’s not that big of a deal though I think, for the general population, because people have taken photographs of nude people ever since the invention of the camera. People have painted pictures of people naked ever since probably art has had a canvas. So I don’t see a problem with the transmission of naked bodies,” said Berman. Berman says he thinks probably 80 to 90 percent of people on a college campus have taken explicit pictures of themselves and sent them. As a sales representative for a nationwide cell phone provider Berman says pretty much all phones offered today have a camera. With sexting he says it’s people’s nature to explore themselves. “Who are we to say that’s right or wrong,” said Berman. Though she has never engaged in the sending or receiving of explicit photos by means of sexting, River Hills police officer Lindsay Lehr says as long as it doesn’t involve minors and all parties have authorized the exchange, it’s okay. “ I guess when it comes to consenting adults, I have no issue with it in the sense that if they both understand what they’re doing and agree to the pictures, then I have no issue with it,” says Lehr. The Risk of Sexting Sophomore Dan Puhek agrees that there is no problem with sexting, as long as there is no non-consensual distribution of the photos or use for some form of blackmailing or extortion. Puhek says men are very visually stimulated as far as sex, which is one reason he says people engage in this act of sexting, especially on college campuses. “I think maybe the risk of it, the nature of kind of a ‘dirtiness’ if you will, quote on quote, that’s associated with it, I think kind of adds that little bit of sexual energy to it and makes it a little bit fun for them,” said Puhek. One thing Puhek says must be understood while sexting, is that possession is nine-tenths of the law. Referring to adults engaging in sexting, Puhek says if you have a picture on your phone and it was willingly sent to you, you can do whatever you want with it. Puhek says most people engaging in the act aren’t really thinking about the risk of it being made public. “If you’ve ever been pulled over by a traffic cop, you know, you’re thinking about trying to get to school on time, you’re not thinking about ‘I rolled through the stop sign at two miles an hour and there might have been a chance that there could have been a car coming from the other traffic that could have hit me. You’re not thinking that,” said Puhek. Despite people’s tendency to not be mindful of these risks, Puhek says as cases such as the ones in the Milwaukee area continue to surface people will start to realize that kind of thing could happen and their photos could get out there. Though Puhek is very aware of the risk of sexting, he wasn’t too shy to admit he has been one to partake in the act. Senior Stephanie Salazar thinks quite the opposite of both Berman and Puhek. She views the act as repulsive. “I’ve never sent or received a naked picture. I think it’s weird. Anyone can get a hold of your phone. Especially working for a phone company, I’ve seen pictures I wish I would have never seen.” Though he says he’s not against it, senior Patrick Rich says people should think about the potential spread of explicit photos more logically. “I actually think sexting is rather enjoyable, however, I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea because the picture never stays with one person. Guys get pictures like that and they show all of their friends,” says Rich. When asked if he has ever sent or received any explicit photos, Rich smiled. “I have done both,” he said. Even though the risks are spread throughout the news across the country, that doesn’t seem to be stopping some college students from engaging in the act of sexting. Whether it is viewed as a technologically advanced canvas of art or a product of sexual stimulation, students like Berman and Puhek don’t understand what all the fuss is about. These students have gone to show that minors aren’t the only ones shedding clothes and clicking send; sexting has become “a product of our times,” as Berman says. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:46:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23544&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23544&mname=Article Public Golf Courses Not Affected by Declining Economy By Shane Cuccia Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff, 2009 Despite the declining economy, the Milwaukee County Parks System expects its golf courses to maintain an average of 40,000 rounds per course in this upcoming season. With the current economic situation, public courses, like the 16 in the Parks System, are less expensive and give Milwaukee area golfers a convenient place to play. “They (golfers) may think twice about driving an hour to Kohler and spending $300 or more to play golf when they could play here,” said Scott Evans, the PGA Professional at Brown Deer Golf Course. “If they’re a local resident and they have their county discount card they’re going to play here for roughly $40”. Evans said that he started seeing a trend last season of more golfers that were members of private county clubs playing at Brown Deer. This trend has continued into this season. With the declining economy, some golfers are moving away from private golf courses. This is a positive for public courses in the area. The weather has also been quite good this spring, which gives golf courses an early start to the season. This was not the case last season. Because of the declining economy, it is not a question of whether or not golfers are going to golf, but a question of where they are going to do it. Golf is a game that many people have a passion for and they are going to do it no matter what. Because of their passion for the game and the declining economy, golfers are going to make some adjustments in their finances and spending habits in the upcoming golf season. One adjustment golfers are going to make this year is the amount of money they spend on travel. Instead of spending money on gas to driving an hour or two to play golf, golfers will look for courses that are closer to home. By staying closer to home Milwaukee area golfers will also save money on green fees, since the courses in Milwaukee County are relatively inexpensive to the courses that they would normally be traveling to. Passion for the Game Many people are under a lot of stress because of these bad economic times. For golfers, golf can be used as a way to relieve this stress. “Golf is a passion that many people have and it’s our get-away from the stress of normal life,” said Matt Dono, the First Assistant Golf Professional at Brown Deer. Combine the passion that so many golfers like Dono have for golf and the stress relief that it provides, and you get more people playing more golf this season. The Milwaukee County Parks System expects the passion of golfers in the area will not affect the number of rounds they play at its golf courses this season compared to last season. Travel Expenses With the economy in a down ward spiral, one adjustment golfers will be making this year is the amount of money they spend on travel. “Because of the downturn it does sort of keep me a little closer to home,” said Michael Washington, a Milwaukee area golfer. “I don’t have to drive as far, therefore I don’t have to spend as much on gas, so I anticipate doing things like that”. By spending less money on gas, golfers will be able to play just as many rounds as they did last season, just closer to home. “They (golfers) may change their plans and stay closer to home. Spend less money on gas, spend less money on green fees, and enjoy their golf right at home,” said Scott Evans. By staying closer to home, Milwaukee area golfers are more likely to golf at one of the public courses in the area, which is a positive for golf courses like Brown Deer. Green Fees Another adjustment golfers are making this season because of the economy is the amount of money they spend on green fees. This season golfers are going to be more conscious of how much they are spending on a round of golf. “Maybe, perhaps playing nine holes as opposed to playing 18 holes, walking instead of a cart, so just things like that I will probably try to do,” said Washington. By spending less on green fees, golfers will be able to golf more often. This is another positive for public courses in the Milwaukee area because they are relatively inexpensive, especially if you have a county discount card. If you would like more information about the Milwaukee County Parks System, you can visit their website at www.county.milwaukee.gov. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:44:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23542&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23542&mname=Article Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District Medicine Collection Day BY Samantha Jackson Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff, 2009 The amount of prescription medicine disposed by Milwaukee County residents went up by half a ton this year at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s Medicine Collection Day to help protect the pollution of Lake Michigan and keep children out of reach of these medications. With more research being done, findings show that a lot of prescription drugs such as anti-depressants, have been being found in Lake Michigan. Because of the pollution to the lake, these medications are starting to be found not only in the bloodstreams of fish, but also in the water people take into their own systems each day. Bill Graffin, the event coordinator and public information manager of MMSD, hypothesized that the amount of medicine would go up in comparison to last year’s event. Last year, a total of three and a half tons of pharmaceuticals were collected in four counties. This year, a total of 1,475 participants attended and a total of 2.73 tons of pharmaceuticals were collected in Milwaukee only. At this event, there were a dozen pharmacists volunteering to take in the medication from the participants and then put the bins of medicine into the Veolia trucks to dispose of the prescription. Many participants’ reasons for disposing their prescriptions this way was because of the worries about pollution. Volunteer pharmacists checking what medications they are taking in MMSD is a district that has specific goals: • Protect Lake Michigan from pollution • Provides water reclamation and flood management services • Handle water quality research • Collect household hazardous waste and pharmaceuticals • Monitor industrial waste • Plan and engineer services and milogranite (a fertilizer) Many civilians came with bags full of medications, while others come each year so they don’t have a ton to dispose of. Some people even had trunks full. On Saturday, April 18, from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m., a steady flow of cars and walk-ups dropped off their unused medications. At 8:30 a.m. people were already in line, even though the event did not start until 9 a.m. Participant driving to drop off their medication, one participant walking through Purpose of the Event The Medicine Collection Day has many purposes. One purpose is, “To keep the stuff out of Lake Michigan and to keep it out of our waterways. Waste water treatment plants are not designed to remove pharmaceuticals, so it’s important to never flush them and never pour them down the drain,” according to Graffin. Recently, there have been many pharmaceuticals being found in our drinking water and the water where the fish are inhabited in. Graffin explained, “They’re finding in some rivers downstream of waste water treatment plants, male fish with female organs and eggs.” One participant, Donald Dobbs, is very concerned about the pollution in our water. “I think they say some of this stuff can get back into our drinking water,” explained Dobbs. He also has concerns about the growth of plants, tress, grass, and the health of the fish. Controlled Substances At the collection, the police were required by law to attend and be responsible for the disposal of controlled substances such as Vicodin. The controlled substances are handled by the police and, “The [police] department has an approved guideline and procedure which destroys the drugs and those are obviously under the guidance of the drug enforcement administration,” said Milwaukee Police Department’s Lieutenant, Keith Balash. Lately in the news, many stories of students overdosing on prescription medications mixed with other substances such as alcohol are making the top headlines. One consequence of prescription medicine could result in death. “Controlled substances that are in households that aren’t being used are turned in on events like this rather than remaining in residences in the medicine cabinet, said Balash. Minors have access to them and use them in situations where they might be combining them with other controlled substances and/or alcohol.” Ron Irwin, who works for Aurora Pharmacy, thinks that one main consequence of the improper disposal of medication is that “our environment is impacted. When people are throwing their medications in the garbage or put it down the toilet, it ends up in our waterways and we are finding that it is showing up in our waterways.” The more medications that are being found in the lake, the inclination of drugs in our bodily systems and in the bloodstreams of fish will keep rising. Where the Medication Goes and How Much Every year at the collection, the prescription drugs go to Veolia to be incinerated. Medications piled up quickly in the tubs for an ending result of 2.73 tons. Tubs of prescription medication ready to go into the truck to be disposed of Each year, it is expected by coordinators that the amount of pharmaceuticals and attendance will keep on the rise. Ron Irwin says, that with all of the deaths occurring because of the misuse of prescription, awareness has rose of this event and they will continue to have it each year. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:42:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23541&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23541&mname=Article Cashing in at the Blood Bank By Jason Kopplin Andy Belonger graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point in 2007. Now he has a wife, a baby daughter, and a mortgage. In order to pay the bills and have money left over, he donates plasma twice a week. In a difficult economy, blood is a hot commodity. Plasma and whole blood donation centers compete for potential donors. While both donations offer their own rewards, the promise of a payday makes plasma the more appealing option for many. Plasma is the liquid in blood and is used for a variety of medical purposes and occasionally for cosmetics. There are three plasma donation centers in Milwaukee. Plasma donors can earn over $200 per month by donating regularly. Many people turn to plasma donation as a way to stretch their budget. With the economy faltering since last year, more people have turned to plasma donation for extra income. The plasma donation industry says that donations in 2009 will be up by several million from last year. Whole blood donation is also of vital importance. Blood Center of Wisconsin, for example, is the sole blood supplier for local hostipals. A donor cannot give both plasma and whole blood. Many plasma donors say they feel good that they are helping people, but the money is what drives them. Plasma Explained Plasma is a straw-colored liquid. Red blood cells flow through the plasma. During the donation process, called plasmapheresis, whole blood is drawn. The liquid plasma is then separated and the blood cells are returned. According to Talecris Plasma resources in Milwaukee, a typical donation takes 45 minutes and produces a liter of plasma. A donor can give again in two days. Sean Baumgartner is the assistant manager of the Talecris Plasma Resources located at 2530 West North Avenue. “Plasma is essential for a wide range of life-saving medications,” said Baumgartner. “These plasma-derived therapies are used to treat rare, chronic, and often genetic diseases such as hemophilia and genetic emphysema. The therapies are also used to treat shock, trauma, and burns.” Baumgartner said that they do see college students, a wide cross section of people. A Plasma Payday Some object to describing the process of giving plasma as a donation, since the donors are paid. In the strictest sense, donors are paid for their plasma, but compensated for their time spent donating. “We pay our donors based on their time, not on their donation,” said Baumgartner. A donor is paid $20 to $30 for a first visit and $30 to $40 for a second visit in the same week. If a donor regularly gives the maximum two times a week, they can earn over $200. The need for extra cash drove Andy Belonger to start donating last year. “It’s about the money,” said Belonger. “It didn’t really cross my mind until around Christmas time when money was a little tight and I was thinking of different ways that could help bring in a little bit.” While some donate regularly, others only come in when they need the extra cash. “I only donate every now and then,” said Kathy Pouthavong, who donates at Talecris on North Ave. “It’s only when I need cash.” Willie Peterson came to Talecris a year ago for some quick extra cash. “I needed my driver’s license and they were giving out $50,” said Peterson. “My drivers license was like $47. I came and donated and I got my $50. I’ve been coming ever since. I’m a V.I.P. now, that means I get to go in front of everybody else.” More people are looking to bring in a little through plasma donation recently. Bloodbanker.com, a website that helps people find plasma donation centers in their community, saw a 50-percent increase in traffic in 2008. Additionally, some plasma industry groups project 16-million plasma donations for 2009. That is up from 10-million donations three years ago. Not everyone finds plasma donation process to be worthwhile. Liz Leighton is a junior at University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. She found the plasma donation process too time consuming, even though she needed the money. “It started out right after I quit my job,” said Leighton. “ I needed the extra money because I’m paying for college. It’s like a 45-minute bus ride for me and I hate waiting for the bus. I just never went back and got a job instead.” The Case for Whole Blood People who donate plasma cannot donate whole blood. The Blood Center of Wisconsin (BCW), headquartered at 768 North Wisconsin Avenue, provides all the hospitals in southeastern Wisconsin with their blood supply. While plasma donation can be a lucrative opportunity for many, unpaid blood and plasma donations are vital to the wellbeing of the local community. Crystal McNeal is the public relations manager for BCW. “If you want to contribute to healthcare in your community and helping patients, you would come to a community blood center like Blood Center of Wisconsin,” said McNeal. “If your motive is to be paid to go to a plasma center, then clearly, that’s your focus.” The Economic Impact on Blood Donation While overall numbers remain strong, BCW has seen some effect from the economic downturn. “I think the economy has had an impact, particularly with our corporate drives,” said McNeal. “There are a lot of companies that have had long-standing blood drives with us. Of course, if they’re laying off staff, they’re not able to focus on things like community service.” Both plasma and whole blood donation provide beneficial medical treatments. In difficult economic times, the good deed that also includes a payday is more appealing to many, including Andy Belonger. “It’s always nice to help people,” said Belonger. “But the only reason I considered donating plasma is that you can make money doing it. Plus, if you donate whole blood you can’t donate plasma for two months. So I can’t do it now because I’d miss out on the plasma.” Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:32:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23534&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23534&mname=Article UWM Safety Patrols By: Andy Fabitz MILWAUKEE- Since inception in January 2008, 4,200 citizens have contacted the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s S.A.F.E officers for various reasons. Of these 4,200 citizens, 3,142 were UWM students. The officers work around campus from East Menlo on the north, East Park on the south, North Cambridge on the west, and North Marietta on the east providing a service to the community. According to Detective Sergeant Art Koch of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Police Department, theft is the main crime in this area. “While there is still crime, in my opinion there would be a lot more if we did not have these patrols in the area,” he said. The officers work 7 p.m. to 1 a.m., but some students are unaware of what the officers do. “I’ve been at UWM for two years and I have seen them around, but I am not really sure what they do,” University of Wisconsin Milwaukee senior Jeremy Doyle said. Doyle is not the only one unaware of what the officers do, however. “To be honest, I have no idea what they do. I always just see them walking around,” senior Mark Cox explained. “I am sure they do something, or at least I hope they do.” What they do and who they are University of Wisconsin Milwaukee student Brett Lavelle joined the S.A.F.E (Safety for Everyone) officer volunteer program seven months ago and has enjoyed every second of it. “I was looking for a job with the campus police because I am a criminal justice major, and I figured it would be a good way to get me a little taste of law enforcement,” he said. “Every experience is enjoyable, and whenever a neighbor comes out and thanks us, we know we are doing a good job.” S.A.F.E officer Jean Gobeli joined for the same reason as Lavelle. “I am also a criminal justice major, and I wanted to see what was going on out there and get more training on what police officers do,” he said. “It is great to get out in the community and know you are giving a helping hand.” Standing in the cold rain, fighting back the shivers, the two explained a typical night on patrol. “We do a lot of escorts to and from parties, and we are all on foot checking the welfare of students and the community,” Lavelle said. “Safe patrols are here to protect the neighborhood, and the main function of these officers is to observe and report,” Koch said. The patrols are out in these areas to report any suspicious activity, and with a direct line to the police department, help will be to the officers fast if needed. They are not hands-on like police officers but have been involved in stopping burglaries, spotting drunk drivers, seeing fights in progress, giving directions, and giving escorts. “I am very thankful for the S.A.F.E officers,” UWM sophomore Carly Wycklendt said. “I work late at night as a waitress and I used to walk home by myself. One night I was confronted by a man. I ended up having to pepper spray him, and ever since that night I have used the walking patrols.” Reason for Implementing The S.A.F.E officer volunteer program was put in place by the UWM Police Department. The program was launched in an attempt to get more neighbors in the UWM area involved in making a difference in the neighborhoods. Koch said he is unsure who or where the money comes from to pay for the patrols, but “it is coming from somewhere,” he said. “We get people out in the area that are in uniform, and if somebody comes here and wants to commit a crime and they see one of our officers, they will go somewhere else,” Koch said. The program gives the students and individuals an opportunity to make a difference in the community as well as to get some real world experience. “A lot of the officers want to be police officers one day, and this is a great stepping stone for those individuals,” Koch said. Future of the patrols Koch explained the S.A.F.E volunteer program is achieving its goal and making a difference to reduce crime in the fore mentioned areas. “The patrols are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future,” Koch said. For more information on the S.A.F.E volunteer program or the UWM Police Department click here. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:23:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23530&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23530&mname=Article By Staci Staffaroni Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff 04/30/09 Despite the Wisconsin ban on gay marriage will gay couples travel to Iowa to get married? Progressives everywhere may have been surprised when Iowa recently became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage. A State Supreme Court decision legalized gay marriage in Iowa. So will residents of surrounding states go to Iowa just as many gay couples trekked to California? As of now in Wisconsin the answer seems to be an overwhelming no. The unanimous Iowa Supreme Court 69-page decision was handed down in early April. On April 24, 2009 the ruling went into effect and three days later gay couples were allowed to begin applying for marriage certificates in Iowa. Wisconsin shares a border with Iowa. It borders four Iowa Counties: Dubuque, Allamakee, Jackson, and Clayton. Iowa does not have a residency requirement to obtain a marriage certificate, meaning that couples do not need to be residents of Iowa in order to apply for a marriage certificate there. As of April 27, 2009 gay couples in Wisconsin have only contacted Dubuque County to apply for a marriage certificates. According to Toni at the Dubuque County Clerk of Courts office as of the 27th four couples from Wisconsin contacted their office. In the three other bordering counties all clerk of courts offices reported no gay couples from Wisconsin have contacted them. Polk County Iowa, which includes the capitol city Des Moines, also reported that no gay or lesbian couples from Wisconsin had contacted them as of April 23, 2009. An advocacy group based out of Madison, WI that promotes Judeo-Christian principles is not pleased with the ruling. “They [the Iowa Supreme Court] have essentially redefined marriage for some personal agenda,” said Julaine Appling of the Wisconsin Family Council. According to a 2006 Gallup poll, published on the Gallup News Service, found that a solid 58-percent of Americans opposed gay marriage. Solidarity in Iowa One Iowa, a gay rights advocacy group based in Des Moines disagrees. One Iowa stated they’ve received an overwhelming amount of support from many Iowans. “…it shows how most Iowans respect each other and have a common decency for their neighbors and just want to see them protected,” said Justin Uebelhor of One Iowa. One Iowa produced a commercial in response to recent conservatives ads against gay marriage. You can see the ad at: http://www.oneiowa.org/web/this_place.shtml Fair Wisconsin is a gay rights advocacy group also based out of Madison, WI. According to the Deputy Executive Director Christine Callsen Fair Wisconsin also has not been approached by Wisconsin couples wanting to get married in Iowa. A Shared border, but no common ground Many Wisconsin residents are likely familiar with the state’s ban on gay marriage. However, many may not be familiar with the fact that it is actually a crime. For gay couples from Wisconsin who choose to marry outside of the state not only is their marriage considered void when they return, but they can face a penalty. The penalty – up to nine months in jail, or a $10,000 fine. Could it be that this statute is a deterrent for gay couples wanting to go to Iowa to get married? To date no gay couples in Wisconsin have been prosecuted. In Madison, “The Dane County District Attorney informed me he has no intention of prosecuting those couples,” said Callsen of Fair Wisconsin and she added “he feels it would be a waste of tax payer dollars.” Ben and Tony are a gay couple living in Milwaukee. They indicated they have no intention of going to Iowa to get married and added they would get married if gay marriage were legalized in Wisconsin. However, they do know of other gay couples who were married outside of Wisconsin and since returning also have not been prosecuted. Appling said those marriages should be declared void, and as far as what has happened in Iowa she says, “It was judicial activism at a whole new level.” While conservative groups react One Iowa is proud of their efforts and the progressive action of Iowa. The gay rights advocacy group has organized volunteer efforts throughout the state. They held rallies in 10 Iowa cities, put together events, and organized volunteers at many of the clerk of court offices throughout Iowa last Monday. The group is hopeful that what has happened in Iowa will spread throughout the rest of the Midwest, including Wisconsin. Advocacy in Wisconsin Back in Wisconsin both Fair Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Family Council continue to work toward their goals and mission. Fair Wisconsin is currently working toward domestic partner benefits and equal rights for gay and lesbian couples in Wisconsin. As one gay couple had indicated to Christine Callsen, “I’d rather be prosecuted than persecuted.” For additional information about Fair Wisconsin please visit: www.fairwisconsin.org and for additional information about the Wisconsin Family Council please visit: http://www.wifamilycouncil.org Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:17:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23527&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=23527&mname=Article Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} By Carl Engelking Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff April 20, 2009 Administrators preparing for a $20 million budget cut at UW-Milwaukee are considering expanding the number of courses offered online to reduce costs and generate new revenues. This could mean students may pay more of the extra online fees to attend classes from their home. However, university officials say they have also launched a new campaign to bring more returning adult students to UWM by enticing them with the flexibility offered by additional online courses. According to a memorandum issued Feb. 10, by provost and Vice Chancellor Rita Cheng, all Deans and Department heads are currently preparing a Budget Planning Exercise that identifies cost reduction strategies for a 5 to 10 percent budget decrease at UW-Milwaukee. Associate Vice Chancellor Ruth Williams said departments are being asked to find ways to continue growing as a university while also cutting costs. “Technology is a great way to both maximize revenue and reduce costs,” said Williams. On an administrative side, Williams said the university is cutting paper marketing and working on developing more Internet based marketing to reduce printing costs. But interviews with administrators and deans revealed that increasing the number of classes and degrees offered online is a popular strategy to combat a tighter budget. While administrators tout the cost saving and revenue generating benefits of this technology, students’ feelings toward learning on the Net are mixed. Students have voiced concerns about the extra $275 fee attached to enrolling in classes online, and feel that an increase in online classes would heighten the chances of paying this bill. But for others, the larger fee is a fair amount to pay for the added convenience and flexibility of the classes. William James is a senior at UWM majoring in history. Throughout his tenure at UWM, he’s enrolled in three online courses (The History of Rome, Quantitative Analysis of Historical Documents, and Math 105). “In my experience, I think that online courses are generally less satisfying,” said James. “I feel like I’m really paying for the convenience of the professors.” Other students, like Hannah Yale, avoid online classes because of the cost. Yale is an Art Education major. She will try not to take an online class while she’s at UWM. “I like physically going to class, and to me, paying an extra fee is like paying more for less of the college experience,” said Yale. Laura Pedrick, a Special Assistant in Academic Affairs, said that the $275 course fee is largely reinvested back into maintaining and developing the technology needed to deliver an online course. For other students, like Robert Roppert, online classes are an ideal way to obtain an education. Roppert works more than 40 hours each week and said it would be close to impossible to gain his degree without these classes. For Roppert, taking online courses suites his learning style. “I like the fact that I can learn at my own pace,” said Roppert. “Sometimes discussions move quickly and I get lost, I’m also just more of an independent learner.” Roppert felt that the extra fee was worth the benefits offered by online education. Growing as a University Rodney Swain, Associate Dean of Letters and Science, has been in and out of budget meetings for the last month. On his desk, the “In” box was stacked high with folders and documents, while the “Out” box remained empty signaling the task facing administrators like him. “One of the biggest challenges is not only managing a budget cut, but also growing as a university,” said Swain. “Online education can allow us to do both.” Swain outlined a number of methods that incorporate online education that combined would save costs. These included: - Developing virtual laboratories - Designing more hybrid courses that direct classroom work online and meet less often. - Redesign more courses to be delivered online Swain teaches in the Psychology department. Currently, he’s working on developing effective methods to teach online laboratories that were traditionally conducted in classrooms. “Labs are expensive, and if we can create a beneficial online alternative we could buy fewer materials,” said Swain Pedrick is a Special Assistant in Academic Affairs; she said that online education could also increase revenues at the university by targeting new students. Primarily, the university is targeting adult students attempting to go back to school or enroll for the first time. “The convenience offered through an online class is appealing to adult students who often work full time and have families,” said Pedrick. Pedrick said that the university just launched a new marketing campaign on the adult or returning student section of the website. The site now features the option to play a 50 year-old student’s first hand account of enrolling back in college. Growing Popularity of Online Learning According to internal UW-Milwaukee reports, online education has been on a steady rise. From 2002-07, online course enrollment has increased by over 2,500 students. Now, 14 percent of all UW-Milwaukee students are taking at least one online class. The Spring ’09 online enrollment data breaks down as follows: - 185 total classes offered online. - 3,967 students are taking at least one online class - 1,017 students are enrolled exclusively online “We’ve found that online classes are usually the first to be enrolled,” said Pedrick. “There is a growing demand for these classes.” The growth rate at UW-Milwaukee reflects a national trend that’s been developing over the past five years. According to a report issued by The Sloan Consortium, 9.6 percent of all college students were enrolled in an online course in 2002. In 2007, this percentage swelled to 21.9 percent of all college students. In 2007, UW-Milwaukee received a three-year $500,000 Alfred P. Sloan grant from the Sloan Consortium. The money is being used to develop more blended and hybrid courses at the university. Some student students are hesitant to embrace the role the Internet plays in their education. They feel that learning from a distance diminishes the college experience, and limits the academic and social development that occurs from attending physical classes. James said part of the reason for his dissatisfaction with online education was the amount of independent learning required by the student. “If I’m paying to go to school I want someone to teach me, I don’t want to pay extra to teach myself,” said James. James felt that he didn’t learn as much online as he might have in a face-to-face class. Pedrick said that number of studies conducted both nationally and at UW-Milwaukee have shown that student performance is often the same for both online and face-to-face classes. “Some instructors said that their students actually engage in more discussion online since it’s worked into the course,” said Pedrick. “Often, teachers learn more about their students from these discussions than in a face-to-face class.” Pedrick said that in face-to-face classes only four or five students usually are highly involved in discussions. Online classes give students that don’t often contribute in a live class a chance to offer their perspective on an issue. Nazil Dancil left behind her parents and home in Istanbul, Turkey at the age of seventeen. For the last four years, she has lived largely independently. Her choice to enroll in college was about more than just earning a degree. “I’m going to school for discipline, not just to sit at home and work at my leisure,” said Dancil. “Having the obligation and responsibility to go to class is part of growing as a person.” Dancil also said that people lose the social interaction between other students when they are encouraged to stay at home away from campus. “This campus is like our own community, and if things continue to just operate through the Internet I think we’ll lose this,” said Dancil. Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:37:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21936&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21936&mname=Article Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} To read part 2 of this series, go to Laura Kezman's multi-media page at: https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/ldkezman/www/ Part 1: Total dollar amount UWM spends on travel is not clear By: Laura Kezman Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff April 10, 2009 UW-Milwaukee plans to roll with the economic punches by cutting travel expenses at the decree of Chancellor Santiago—but an overall dollar amount indicating how much the university currently spends on travel does not exist. Statewide budget cuts for UW schools are underway, with UWM being forced to bite an anticipated $19.8 million bullet for 2009-11. Santiago pointed out in a mass email sent to all university students on March 3 that the school is crafting ways to be more cost-effective in lieu of pending cuts, and travel expenditures made the list for additional scrutiny. However, when a Frontpage Milwaukee investigative reporter sought a bottom line for the total dollar amount spent by the university on travel expenses for 2007-08, UWM officials revealed that there is no central record that gives such an aggregate number. In other words, asked how much UWM spent on travel overall last year, officials could not say. Current university travel records are scattered across each department on campus, outlining all faculty members’ travel costs, including the deans', piecemeal. They are not itemized in any fashion that would easily show a total amount spent, UWM Open Records Custodian Amy Watson says. “Travel records for the deans are indeed in multiple locations,” said Watson in an email regarding a records request for the travel expenses. “As I understand it, there is no aggregate number of dollars spent on travel at UWM, as the travel for each individual is contained within the budget for his or her individual unit.” Last November, UW System President Kevin Reilly established a travel approval process that aims to cut costs statewide. For any person or organization seeking to travel on the university’s dime they must fill out an official travel request form that must be approved by either the Chancellor or the person(s) designated by the Chancellor. While the decision to scrutinize travel more heavily was made statewide at the end of November, it was officially implemented on Dec. 1, 2008, according to a mass email Santiago sent to all faculty, staff and students on that day. In the email, Santiago underlines that travel will only be financially supported if it is “essential” to certain university objectives. The ratio of how many travel requests have been approved to those that have been denied since December is also unknown, though, university officials said, leaving how effective the stricter regulations have been to remain in question. How travel is approved Some of the factors that must be considered by all UW schools upon a travel request being approved, as stated in the Travel Approval Process document written by Controller Ryan Liebert, include: Is the travel essential and necessary for the employees to perform his/her duties? Are there alternative sites closer to the institution where the business could be conducted that would result in lower travel costs? Would attendance enhance the employee’s performance? For UWM, however, Chancellor Santiago is not the one sitting with a rubber stamp overseeing the travel requests that pass on and off his desk, as it turns out. The deans and division heads are the ones appointed to determine which requests are approved or denied, according to UWM Travel Manager Pamela Kissinger. Kissinger receives stacks of UWM travel documents on her desk after the travel has already been completed, including the Travel Expense Reports (TER) and copies of the request forms proving that the trip has been approved. Many of the documents she receives, however, do not fall into the cut and dry category that most consider to be travel. These range from a student organization seeking to be reimbursed for the poster board they used at a fundraiser to Santiago being credited for mileage driven to Madison, in addition to more costly outings such as out-of-state trips that many times include airfare, lodging and meal expenditures. Though Kissinger is inundated with documents showing dollar amounts for how much the university is spending on travel on a daily basis, she is also one with no idea how much the university is currently spending overall. “It’s not something that’s simple and automated enough to answer these questions easy,” Kissinger says over the phone before advising any interested person to refer to UWM's Business & Financial Services website for more information regarding the travel approval process. In order to know how much the university needs to cut in its expenses, a working number of how much it is currently spending should be available, some students say. Because there is not, UWM some students question other budget-driven decisions being made by the university’s administration. One budget-driven decision in particular: Tuition increases. Leah Bollmeier, a fourth- year student who cringes at the thought of higher tuition, thinks it is surprising that the university does not keep more organized records of its expenses. “It is shocking to me that they don’t know how much money is being spent,” says Bollmeier “They should be able to refer to their records and get a solid number—I would expect them to keep track of that stuff.” The process of obtaining these travel records, which specifically summarizes all in-state, out-of-state and international travel among faculty, is not an easy one. There are over 20 “units” on campus, according to Watson, each one with its own set of documents. Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:48:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21854&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21854&mname=Article Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Union Theatre Playing Hide-and-Seek? By Amber Gramza of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff April 10, 2009 Counted attendance at the Union Theatre is on the rise, but many students still say they’ve never heard of the tucked away treasure, and most of its attendees seem not to be affiliated with campus. Almost half of students informally polled by Frontpage Milwaukee in the Union – which is where the theater is located – said they had never heard of it, even though it’s been around for decades and has a national reputation. However, organizers are happy that overall attendance is increasing. The theatre gets nearly $30,000 from the school for its budget. However, attendance figures from one month of screenings showed that less than 30 percent of attendees were actually students to the ticketed screenings. With 74 of the Union Theatre’s scheduled showings being free, the question raises: Why are UWM students not utilizing this theatre more? The theatre on the second floor of the Union has been at UWM for decades and is supported by the school’s general funding. Though UWM students have trouble finding their way to the Union Theatre (if at all) because of what some describe as its poor location, the attendance is up overall from previous years. Attendance rose 13 percent last year and could increase again this year. Free screening attendance is monitored by a theatre employee simply using a clicker which keeps track by headcount, though priced ticketed screenings show that a majority of Union Theatre attendees are community based film aficionados. The Union Theatre isn’t just known by Milwaukee, but is respected at a national level because of its screenings and thought provoking open discussions. “TOGA! TOGA!” The second floor of the Union is like the final stage of a party. That point where most of the people have had one too many Jaeger shots and the others have left. A majority of students are passed out, sprawled on two or three chairs to try and make themselves comfortable, while a small group of students’ hunch over notes and open lab manuals studying in utter silence. It’s here, in the far East corner of the second level, where two closed glass doors hide in the shadows. An unlighted “Theatre” is displayed above the doors, casting a cold and alienated hue on the surrounding area. At night, when the “Theatre” light finally flickers on, the space comes alive. The smell of organic (yes, organic) popcorn fills the air and there are actual remote signs of life. It’s not only a place of entertainment, but a place of business. The Union Theatre budget is currently $29,800 for 2008 through 2009, provided by Linda Corbin-Pardee, Student Services Program Manager as well as one of the overseers of the Union Theatre. This budget covers the expenses of renting the films themselves, and the additional costs of shipping. Last year the Theatre made $25,323.92 in ticket sales and concessions combined, according to the “Daily Consolidated Revenue Center Menu Item Sales Summary”. Not every screening is free, though you’ll be paying less than the $9.50 cost of most other theatres. UWM Theatre Current Ticket Prices: $6 for the general public $5 for UWM Faculty, Staff/Alumni Association Members; all non-UWM students; and senior citizens all with proper ID. $4 for UWM students with a proper ID But who’s paying for it? Twenty-four out of 50 students polled by Front Page Milwaukee in the Union had no idea about the Union Theatre. There were 23 students aware of the Union Theatre, though none of them had seen a film there. The three students polled who had watched a film, hadn’t seen more than two. “Let’s All Go to the Lobby, Let’s All Go to the Lobby…” The Union Theatre opened in 1972 during the second expansion of the Union. According to the Fireside Lounge, the first film ever shown on the big screen was Medea, directed by Pier Paolp Pasoloini. According to the Union Theatre’s 2009 spring calendar, they’re showing over 130 screenings. Corbin-Pardee believes each of theses screenings are used for learning, and allowing unique showing opportunities. (Pictured - theatre concession stand) “The goal of the Union Theatre is to be a place where good filming that hasn’t made it into the mainstream, can be shown,” said Corbin-Pardee. Showing such films opens up boundless opportunities for documentaries, but what kind of opportunity is it with some students not aware of the Theatre itself? “Houston—We Have a Problem” “I wasn’t even aware UWM had a theatre until my junior year,” said Mike Jensen, now a UWM senior. Though enlightened about the Theatre, Jensen still hasn’t seen a film there. “I feel the location leads to the problem of students not knowing about the Theatre. There’s a similar problem with the Craft Center downstairs,” said Corbin-Pardee. She admits however, the Union Theatre takes more prominence with a non-student audience anyways. “The Union Theatre has a big following outside of campus,” said Corbin-Pardee. “It’s actually known at a national level. We had a projectionist come from out of state and he knew about us. We’ve even had the Journal Sentinel cover us.” One Can Never Escape Those Sticky Floors Personally going to two different showings on a Thursday and following Friday night, the crowd ranged from roughly 100 Thursday night, to 20 on Friday night. Inside the Union Theatre, it’s the typical movie-goer experience. Sitting in a somewhat uncomfortable chair, the maroon fabric pleated walls and sloped floors reminds anyone of their first time in a movie theater. The lights begin to dim and one polyphonic cell phone ring can be heard as the The Wind starts, with much shushing to follow. Coughing, crunching, and unauthorized soda cans are heard sporadically through the crowd. The type of audience for both films ranged drastically. At least half of the audience Thursday night for The Wind (a silent picture made in the 1920’s) seemed to be non-student or graduate adults 40 years or older. Many husbands and wives snuggled up close while people continued streaming into the theatre. A few undergraduate students did sprinkle the crowd, listening to Ipods until the film started. The Friday night Ossos (the first is a series of Portuguese films) however, had smaller crowd of 20. Practically the entire audience was in the senior citizen range other than one student: a sophomore and journalist named Amber Gramza. Not all of the films have a difficult time reaching undergraduate students. Though the Union Theatre’s Program Manager, David Dinnell, admitted it’s hard to keep track of who’s attending what (especially when it comes to the free screenings), he assured the fact that undergrad students are utilizing the Theatre. “From my perception, attendance of undergrad students has spiked since around 2007,” said Dinnell. “The Union Theatre has been gaining interest of the younger students.” However, in the past three months from January 1st to March 11th of 2009, according to the “Daily Consolidated Revenue Center Menu Item Sales Summary” for the Union Theatre, the ticketed screenings had 293 UWM students ($4), 205 UWM faculty/senior citizen, etc. ($5), and 481 general admissions ($6). This shows that the general admission audience is over one and a half times the amount of UWM students attending. Dinnell was right on the mark when he mentioned overall attendance going up for the Union Theatre. In fall 2005, it was 7,294, while recently fall of 2008 increased to 10,229. The people who are attending the screenings are quite pleased with what they’re seeing. "I Never Dreamed That Any Mere Physical Experience Could Be So Stimulating." Joe Pabst, a 42-year-old non-student and community activist is always excited to see what’s playing next. He was introduced to the Union Theatre through the Peck School of the Arts, and the LGBT Resource Center. Though he agreed “free is nice”, Pabst concluded the University programming is worth whatever the cost. “This isn’t just a movie hall, it feeds the soul and expands the mind,” said Pabst. Chloe Ertman, a UWM sophomore, has also seen a film at the Union Theatre. It was mandatory for her Spanish class, but she enjoyed it none the less. “It was a nice theatre, and the foreign film was really good,” said Ertman. Ertman believes just as Corbin-Pardee did that the location is what’s really giving students a hard time. “Not a lot of students have a reason to wander up there,” said Ertman. “Also, maybe people don’t have enough time with their busy schedules. Either way I think more classes should require students to see films from the Union Theatre.” Roll the Credits With a mission statement calling itself a, “distinctive center for rarely seen art, bringing people together and serving as a unique space for the creation and discussion of new ideas,” hopefully the Union Theatre can receive a well deserved recognition from its UWM students as well as the national level. It’s a distinctive center for rarely seen art…and a place to get fresh organic popcorn of course. Future films in the Union Theatre include: Momma’s Man: April 3-5 The Betrayal: April 8-10 Jaguar: April 11 and 12 Picture’s From a Revolution: April 16 Rivers of Sand: April 18 and 19 Katyn: April 29 and 30 Owners of the Water: Conflict and Collaboration Over Rivers: May 6 The Italian Film Festival of Milwaukee: May 9 and 10 Student Film Festival: May 16 Senior Screening: May 17 Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:04:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21849&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21849&mname=Article Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} By Edgar Mendez Of the Frontpage Milwaukee staff April 2, 2009 It was half past two on Feb. 21, when Paul Raddatz, Ali “Marie” Raddatz’s father, received the dreadful call. On the other end of the phone was Ali’s ex-boyfriend, whom she’d just broken up with 10 days before. He called to console the father. Confused, Paul couldn’t figure out what the call was about. After a few minutes of conversation, the ex-boyfriend finally realized. No one had told him yet. Earlier that same day, Paul’s first born and only daughter, Ali, a UWM freshman, had been found on a Frederick Avenue apartment couch, dead from a fatal mix of alcohol, valium, and naiveté. She was only 18. Despite his grief, Raddatz wants to do what he can to help prevent any other parent from suffering like him, and he also wants to let people know how special Ali was to him. Along with her father, Ali’s friends also mourn. They worry that she will be wrongly remembered as a drug addict who wasn’t going to go anywhere in life, or as Ali’s lifelong friend Tracy Singer says, “That girl who died of an overdose in Milwaukee.” Her friends, like Paul Raddatz, want people to know that what happened to Ali that February night could happen to anyone. Poster Contest Raddatz, who lives in Hartland, is sponsoring a national poster design contest in her honor. The contest “Remembering Ali,” asks participants to create a design that promotes awareness on being able to tell the difference between a friend who is sleeping, rather than one who has passed out from alcohol poisoning, and what to do about it. “We were very close; the bonding between father and daughter, I don’t think there’s anything closer,” said Raddatz, in an interview with Frontpage Milwaukee. Paul Raddatz (pictured above with his family, including Ali, right) remembers Ali as a little fighter but always in a sweet way. “If she wanted to wear a certain pair of shoes, socks, or clothes, and you didn’t want her too, there would be a battle over it.” According to her father, Ali loved to write and was filling pages in her journal by the third grade, when she wasn’t busy writing letters to her Black Labrador Lucy. Ali, afraid to tell her parents about something she had done wrong, would write letters to her dog Lucy, asking for advice. She also wrote about wanting to have 19 children, all little girls, and at the request of her second grade teacher, helped teach the kindergarten class after school. It was as a child at St. Paul’s school in Waukesha County that she met lifelong friends Maureen Brady, Tracy Singer, and Becky Feaman. “She was new to St. Paul’s and her mother wanted her to meet a friend, so our mothers set up a play date the summer before she started school,” said Singer. Smart and Compassionate, Friends Recall They all recalled Ali as a smart, compassionate girl. They say that she was the type of person who always knew how to make others feel better about their own situations, and also, that she had a goofy side. “In the back seat of her car, she carried two huge gallons full of bubbles; we rode in her car with our hands out the windows blowing bubbles,” said Becky Feaman. Tracy Singer, who is 18 and just one month younger than Ali, remembers meeting up with Ali at the tower at Lapham Peak Park in Delafield. From there it was off to one of the girls’ houses where nights would often involve movies, girl talk, and singing to Spice Girls songs. According to Singer, Ali had “an extreme love for the Spice Girls,” as well as a “strange love for The Price is Right.” “People think that Ali was not thinking, but she was; whatever she tried that night, she thought she knew what she was doing,” said Feaman. “She had just gotten a 3.75 on her latest report card at UWM and was taking honors classes; she was a smart, well balanced kid, who made a bad decision that night,” said her father. Paul Raddatz realizes that young adults nowadays, especially those in college, are presented with lots of opportunities to experiment with drugs and alcohol. He warns them that not all bodies are the same and that just because somebody else’s body can take something doesn’t mean that yours can. “Mixing prescription drugs with alcohol is a recipe for death and disaster; you don’t know what your heart can take in those instances,” said Raddatz. Ali, who had long brown hair, which she loved to style, according to her friends, also had a tiny, slender frame, and weighed only about 110 pounds. Her slim build allowed for the pills and alcohol to more easily seep into her bloodstream. To more easily stop her heart. Paul Raddatz wants to get a message out to young people in Milwaukee, as well as those on other campuses. “Kids need to look out for one another; I can’t let you fall asleep and just assume you’re going to wake up tomorrow, you can be a savior of somebody else’s life,” said Raddatz. “You can’t be afraid to call 911, Ali deserved way better than she got that night; that’s what breaks my heart,” says Ali’s childhood friend, Maureen, voice cracking with emotion. Meanwhile, Tracy Singer struggles to deal with the fact that she has lost the person whom she says knew more about her than even herself. “I would do anything to bring her back.” Paul Raddatz, who believes that there is nothing closer than the bonding between a father and a daughter, recalls he and Ali’s first moments together. “You can remember the day she was born and holding her in your arms, and you can almost remember every time you held her from then on; just being with her will be so greatly missed,” said her father. Cash prizes for the poster contest go to the top three submissions, and everyone who enters will receive a “Remembering Ali” t-shirt. Submissions should be sent to rememberingali@aol.com. The deadline is April 15. Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:32:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21739&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21739&mname=Article The Milwaukee Press Club announced March 17 that Frontpage Milwaukee student journalists have received four prestigious statewide journalism awards, including sweeping the award category of best college news story. The newspaper received two first place awards, for best college news story and best innovative online college news story. The awards are for 2008 work. UW-Milwaukee journalism student Megan Schmidt won three awards. A team of student journalists - Eric Amenda, Melissa Campbell, and Mara Muccio, received the other. The awards come on the heels of prestigious national, regional, and state journalism awards received last year by FPM student journalists. The Milwaukee Press Club "received hundreds of entries for the contest from news organizations and individuals throughout Wisconsin. The competition was judged by professional journalists and journalism scholars from across the country, from San Diego to Syracuse to Philadelphia to Houston, with the judges expressing pleasure at the high quality of work done by Wisconsin journalists," according to a release put out by the Milwaukee Press Club. The student award winners are: Megan Schmidt FIRST PLACE, innovative use of the Web, Multi-media story on shoplifting. Megan created and wrote the story in JMC 320, print and online news, in fall 2008. The judging criteria were: "Submit a link to the web page that shows best use of multiple forms of media to enhance a feature or news story. Include a one-paragraph explanation of how these forms (which may include things such as interactive maps, rollovers, other unique uses of technology) work together to enhance the story's value." FIRST PLACE, best college news story. "University Officials Blame Declining State Support." Investigative story reported in JMC 500 Advanced Reporting class, fall 2007 (published in February 2008).SECOND PLACE. Opinion column. "Busing cuts will jumpstart education." Written as FPM news editor. Eric Amenda, Mara Muccio, and Melissa Campbell SECOND PLACE, best college news story. Investigation into online course fees. The team of student journalists reported and wrote the story for JMC 500, Advanced Reporting, in Spring 2008. Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:13:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21392&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21392&mname=Article By Megan Albrecht Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff March 17, 2009 MILWAUKEE- As the lights dim on the audience and come up on the stage, Carrie Woods’ heart rate accelerates with the beat of the music. She’s gone over this routine before. This time is no different as she leads her team in performing its hip-hop dance routine. HyPerformance Dance Company, also known as HyPe, held its eighth annual winter showcase at the Zelazo Auditorium at UW-Milwaukee. Their group is made up of college students who meet twice each week to choreograph hip-hop dances to be performed for family, friends, and other students. They are not funded by UW-Milwaukee, and often times struggle to find the money to rent performance space. But for HyPe-UWM Chapter Director Carrie Woods, none of that matters, as long as they get to dance “We practice four-five hours each week. We raise our own money, we give up our own time, we all put in a lot of hard work…. but in the end it’s all worth it. Cause we all just love to dance, and as long as there are people that come watch our shows we’re going to keep dancing for everyone.” HyPerformance Dance Company consists of a UW-Milwaukee Chapter, a Marquette Chapter, and a professional chapter known as Monkey Wrench. All of these groups performed at this year’s showcase, along with guest performances by dance groups Cold Commodity, Remix, and break-dancing group Project Break. Cold Commodity consists of three members, Eddie Molenda, Samantha Woods, and Cedric Gardner, who was a finalist on Fox’s third season of, “So You Think You Can Dance.” Molenda, a former member of HyPe-UWM who now teaches hip-hop dance classes throughout southeastern Wisconsin, is always happy to come back to his dancing roots. “It’s always great to come back to where I started dancing just to see how far the team has come. I love performing at these showcases because the crowd is always so hyped and really gets into it.” To see performances by Cold Commodity visit YouTube. Until this year, HyPe Showcases have been held in the Union Ballroom, and Carrie Woods is excited about the Change in Venue. “This is the first year that we’ve had the showcase held in the Zelazo auditorium. We’re really excited we were able to use an actual stage and lighting this year. I think it really up-ed the performance level.” Each team took turns performing, and audience members laughed out loud as HyPe-UWM performed a comedy skit, and cheered louder with the completion of each dance set. Andy Halverson, a senior from UW-Madison had never been to a HyPe show and was not disappointed with what he saw. “I’ve never been to one of these before, but I thought it was a lot of fun. It was cool watching people get together and do a performance like that, just for the love of what they do. I can’t believe it was a free show. I definitely would have paid to come see this.” Thanks to donations from fans, as well as fundraising, HyPe is able to put on these shows for free, with performances at the end of spring and the beginning of winter. HyPe-UWM practices Monday and Wednesday nights in the Union from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. HyPerformance Dance Company is open for anyone to join, and tryouts are held each year at the end of September. For more information, visit it on its Myspace Page. After the show came to an end, members of the audience stood near the stage watching the break-dancers as they kept on performing. Even though it wasn’t part of the show, they continued to dance because, after all, that’s what they love to do. Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:57:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21391&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21391&mname=Article v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Going “green” at UWM will require more green from the State budget By Joel Van Haren of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff March 5, 2009 As environmental agendas expand around the country and shape daily life and business budgeting decisions, the recently completed green roof at UWM’s Sandburg Hall is acting as a “guinea pig” for the university’s big “green” dreams. The Sandburg Hall green roof is leading the way as the state’s first completed project of its type with a price tag of just over $900,000. The green roof method recently implemented in the overdue re-roofing of the Sandburg Hall Commons is expected to help relieve some of the impact resulting from UWM’s ecological footprint in a predominantly urban setting. A “green-roof” utilizes the large flat surfaces found on many city buildings to house sprawling, meadow-like plant life. Foreign and native plants and grasses are planted in a deliberate manner overtop layers of water-proof insulation similar to normal roofing projects. UW-Milwaukee began exploring the option of constructing a green roof on campus in 2005. The university was approached by Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District with an academic research grant to survey ways in which the university could obtain “zero-discharge zone” status. Theoretically, the zero-discharge focus hopes to partner campus beautification with goals of mitigating drainage so as to return to its pre-settlement state. The study comes amidst UWM Chancellor Santiago’s Campus Master Plan, a multiphase plan that will consider the long term needs of the university and the best ways to see those needs are met. Santiago says the plan will analyze expansion, transportation, and environmental sustainability methods that will promote the accessibility and research undertakings of UWM. The proposed green roof project aligns with the university’s Stormwater Master Plan. The plan states that its aim is to “demonstrate the potential for UWM’s urban campus to be transformed into a stormwater friendly landscape.” Soaking It All Up “It acts like a sponge,” says Jim Wasley, associate professor at UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning. “[The green roof] prevents stormwater that would normally run straight off the roof and go into the sewer from doing that. A lot of the water is taken up into the plants and slowly evapotranspirated.” Wasley oversaw the research study funded by MMSD and helped determine the university’s most feasible options to help make campus greener within the realm of building and land use. Benefits of the green roof include better building insulation to help cut down on heating and cooling costs for Sandburg. The greenery atop the commons will also help cut down on “Urban Heat Island Effect,” a common side effect from expansive reflective surfaces in urban areas. “It also keeps water out of the deep tunnel system which, in a big rain event, has problems with capacity,” says Wasley. “That’s when we hear about raw sewage in the lake, and that’s the bigger regional problem we’re trying to help solve.” The initial study envisioned UWM’s numerous impervious concrete surfaces, being transformed into or surrounded by more natural, absorbent green spaces. (Below: A rendering of the full implementation of the proposed green roof policy So, why aren’t we greener? UWM students are wondering, then, why we aren’t doing more as a university to develop our environmental sustainability “We have a box in our room to hold paper,” explains Kurt Sensenbrenner, a sophomore and resident of Sandburg, “A lot of kids don’t do that and it goes right in the trash down the trash chute.” When he isn’t soaking up rays and running up and down fields on UWM’s Ultimate Frisbee team, he spends his time studying Conservation and Environmental Science. Sensenbrenner says residents are “sucking up a lot of energy” in the dorms, and that the cafeteria is using far too many disposable products. Kurt thinks environmental policy is good, but says things need to change if we want to keep the green around. He would like to see more funding directed toward education and waste management. (Watch this video to see how the University of Minnesota is dealing with their waste.) The green roof project differs, however, from other environmental initiatives at UWM. . University Housing, as well as the Student Union, is its own entity with its own budget supported by its paying residents. When the roof was in need of replacing, a job of $500,000 minimum, options to build for the future were considered. University Housing director Scott Peak worked with Wasley and MMSD to develop and implement the project in just over two years. The budgeting for more green roofs and large sustainability projects might take a bit longer, however, as the rest of UWM shares funding with all other UW system schools. These schools have to wait, just like Milwaukee, to see that everybody gets a turn. “We only look at fiscal year-by-fiscal year-by-fiscal year,” explains Kate Nelson, UWM’s first Environmental Sustainability Coordinator. But she says some money is loosening up as of last fiscal year, despite the struggling state budget. Nelson works closely with UWM Physical Plant Services and says the university can get a handle on updating facilities by commissioning buildings through the state. “[The Master Plan] can look at the next five, ten, 20 years and model our [future] resource use based on sustainability and resource consumption,” says Nelson. Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:16:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21198&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21198&mname=Article Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Michael Redd spends time at the UWM Union Olympic gold medalist shares the word of God By: Paul Imig Michael Redd spent nearly two hours at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Thursday night, sharing stories of his Christian beliefs with students and area residents. In addition to being an Olympic gold medalist and former NBA All-Star, the Milwaukee Bucks shooting guard is also an active member of the community. Redd, who was accompanied by his wife Achea and members of the Michael Redd Foundation, said he came with the hope of sending a positive message to everyone who attended. “We’re just trying to bring hope to young people, specifically on campuses,” Michael Redd said. “We were invited to come, and it’s been great.” Michael’s wife Achea shared the stage with her husband, and together the two said they hoped to lift the spirits of everyone in the room. “Michael and I love people. We love to help them. We feel like that’s what we’re supposed to do, to go and spread good news,” Achea Redd said. “To us, good news is a word of encouragement to people who may not have been exposed to that, and hopefully it can help their lives.” Despite the event being relatively formal, Michael Redd took the stage dressed in a vintage Star Wars t-shirt, setting the tone that it was okay to relax and enjoy the night. Laughing about the shirt, he said “I just happened to pull the shirt out of my closet. It just happened to be Star Wars.” “It’s a junk food tee,” Achea Redd added. Michael Redd’s positivity and good vibes are not only off the court, but on the basketball court as well. At the conclusion of every game, whether his team wins or loses, he walks to center court and gives thanks. “Since my rookie year it’s been something that we do after each game. We thank God for no injuries and for safe travels back home, especially on the road,” he said. Although he is sometimes only joined by a few teammates at center court, more often than not there are members of the opposing team standing by his side as well. “Any player is welcome to come,” he said. Redd, who is currently sidelined for the remainder of the season due to a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL) in his left knee, gave an update on the progress of his injury. “No surgery yet,” he said. “Rehabbing, and getting it stronger for next season. That’s all I’ve been doing, rehabbing.” The event was held inside the Wisconsin Room of UW-Milwaukee’s Union, and was sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ and Michael Redd’s organization Wave Ministires. This is Michael Redd’s third time speaking at UW-Milwaukee, and student organizer Thomas Lacombe estimated that around 300 people attended on Thursday. Michael Redd will also be back each of the next two months, on March 12 and April 9. “We do speeches about once a month,” Achea Redd said. Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:12:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21101&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=21101&mname=Article 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} By Muamon Yang and Rose Davis of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff Feb. 22, 2009 Members of the UW-Milwaukee Student Association received student fees to attend a conference in New York City last year, but now some are accusing them of not attending the entire conference - at a cost of about $900. However, some SA officials adamantly deny the allegations. Eleven members from the Student Association’s (SA) executive and legislative branches, along with five members of the University Student Court, traveled to New York City for a leadership conference held by the American Student Government Association. “Originally we were planning to go (to the conference) all day Saturday, but we lost out all day (in the city) Friday because of the snowstorm,” said Emily Grotz, SA treasurer at the time of the trip. Nine of the 11 members hadn’t been to New York before; they left the conference early to do the sightseeing they missed the day before, said Grotz. The conference began at 8 a.m. and ended around 5:15 p.m. Throughout the day, there were four different workshop blocks, each with different sessions that students could attend. Based on Grotz’s claim that the students left at 2:30 p.m., they would have only attended two of the four workshops. However, some SA officials deny that. Although the University Student Court (USC) attended the same conference, its members didn’t travel with SA. USC Chief Justice Michael Roberts said they missed part of the conference on Saturday due to the cancellation of their original flight. “We (USC members) got there around 1:30 p.m. and stayed until at least 4 p.m.,” Roberts said. Arriving at that time would place them right in the middle of the brainstorming roundtables, which, according to the conference schedule, began at 1:15 p.m. “…It was just a leadership conference and how they run their student government. And how different our student system is from other schools,” said Roberts. “(They) called it a workshop but not really what I would consider a workshop.” Workshop block III was from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. and included such topics as “How to make Students Care About Your SG” and “Driving the Power of Your Voice.” Allegations of non-attendance Tyler Draheim, current president of SA, alleged that SA members didn’t attend the entire conference. “People would go to one or two (workshops) and just take off,” Draheim alleged. “They think all the students at Milwaukee are paying for a free vacation.” Sean Deely, a UWM senior, said he was concerned. “I would want to see New York City too if I went. But they had Saturday evening and Sunday to see the city, why couldn’t they just attend the conference to its entirety—the main reason for the trip?” The money to pay for the trip came almost entirely from segregated fees. SA members each contributed $100 to the total trip cost of $9,429. This only covers the cost of the legislative and executive branches of SA because USC arranged their own travel. An article published in the UWM Post in April questioned the high cost of the trip. Grotz said that, although there were no legal restrictions related to spending the money, there should have been moral restrictions. UWM senior David Taylor agrees. “If SA were budgeted money to go to the conference and they didn’t go to all of it, I’d say they misused the money,” Taylor said. Questions about salaries Questions have also been raised as to certain salary increases for SA staff. Salaries paid to positions in the executive branch totaled $59,000 this year, reports revealed. Draheim’s position pays him $10,000—roughly 12 percent more than last year. “The increase in the presidential salary came from an increased workload and committee responsibility. I made a decision to eliminate the Chief of Staff position, a $5,000 line item,” Draheim said. Conference registration cost a total of $2,629 for the eight-hour event, roughly $30 per hour for each student. There are numerous things this money could have paid for that would have directly benefited UWM students, said Grotz, who is now chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC). SAC allocates money to all of the student organizations at UWM. According to university records, $876 would cover a year's worth of printing costs for seven different student organizations. It would also cover the entire cost of the UWM business school’s annual etiquette dinner, an event that provides networking opportunities and teaches business etiquette to 120 students. Draheim claims that there are lax checks at the conference to ascertain whether people attend. “Attendance isn’t taken at the conference,” Draheim said. “As long as you pay, they don’t care whether or not you come.” Draheim feels that this puts the burden of attendance on the shoulders of the president. “…in previous years, the idea has been to go with your friends, have fun, drink and see the town,” Draheim alleged. SA response Robert Grover, SA president at the time of the trip, did not return numerous phone calls in response to these statements. Though Grotz alleged that poor leadership was an issue, she felt that Grover did everything he could to get people to stay at the conference. Amanda Voitlander, who organized the trip, was then vice president of SA. She claims the group attended the majority of the conference, missing only the last round table discussion. When told that Grotz said they left nearly three hours prior to this discussion, she said she couldn’t remember the exact time that they left. “I don’t think missing this session was a loss to our organization,” she said. “I think people use the term misappropriated funds…it’s a strong allegation, people should be careful with it.” Brandon Decker, currently the SA shared governance director, gave different answers as to whether or not the group stayed for the whole conference, though he does remember not attending the closing. “From what I remember everyone went to everything,” Decker said. However, when told that other members had admitted to leaving early, he said, “I would have to say we might have skipped the closing session then,” but added that this was looking back nine months ago and it was hard for him to remember exactly what happened. While Voitlander and Decker are in disagreement with their fellow SA members about what actually occurred that weekend, others are looking at solutions. Draheim said that UWM’s SA is unique because it’s student run, while all other schools in the UW-System have advisors for their student governments. “We have an advisor,” said Logan Campa, president of UW-Superior’s Student Government. “I believe it’s in her job description to be the liaison between the Dean of Students and Student Government Association (SGA).” Campa also said UW-Superior’s student government doesn’t have paid positions. “However, the Chancellor has agreed to pay the President $1,000/year and the Sufac and Executive Directors $500/year. This is unofficial and can be canceled at the Chancellor's discretion,” Campa said in an e-mail. UW-Green Bay has three advisors who share responsibilities over the Student Senate, said Ricky Staley, SGA President. Draheim feels that having an advisor would prevent students from taking advantage of the lack of authority of a student-run atmosphere. Note: This reporting was done in fall's JMC 500 course. Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:53:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=20982&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=20982&mname=Article By Megan Schmidt Of the Frontpage Milwaukee reporting staff Feb. 11, 2009 Frontpage Milwaukee found a 69 percent decrease in the number of campus safety emails sent to students during fall 2008 when compared to fall 2007, but that doesn’t mean robberies and burglaries around campus significantly dropped. Officials aren’t emailing students about all of the violent crimes near UWM. Sometimes the incidents involved suspects who revealed a weapon, implied that they were armed with one, or used force against the victim. Dr. Helen Helen Mamarchev, a vice chancellor in the student affairs office, said that armed robberies almost always warrant an email alert. However, Frontpage Milwaukee found that the university didn’t tell students about all of the armed robberies during fall 2008. University officials do not seem to have a consistent reason for why they sent less email alerts. The university made a practice of sending out email alerts nearly two years ago; however, officials claim there has been no change in policy. Checking The Numbers: Tom Luljak, vice chancellor of university relations, said that during the fall 2007, 13 email alerts were sent to the student body. Just four alerts were sent during fall 2008. Luljak said there was a sharp decrease in crime during fall 2008, but campus neighborhood data suggests otherwise. Robberies, aggravated assaults and simple assaults dipped in fall 2008; however, burglaries were on the rise, according to an analysis of crime that occurred within the 53211 zip code, which is an area heavily populated by students. Crime Fall 2007 Fall 2008 Burglary 22 30 Robbery 24 19 Agg. Assault 8 6 Simple Assault 16 9 In many cases, the crimes students were emailed about last semester are strikingly similar to occurrences this semester. “In my opinion, everything should be sent out by email, but I’m not in charge of that. But we do put everything on the UWM police Web site,” said Lt. Art Koch of the UWM Police Department. The Bigger Picture: Historically, UWM’s crime rate is low compared to other parts of Milwaukee. Despite the UWM area is a relatively safe area in the city, the university received a lot of media attention during the fall 2007 semester because aggravated assaults were on the rise. Furthermore, a student was shot in the leg in 2007 on the 2700 block of N. Murray Ave. The Milwaukee Police Department’s 5th District Chief Anthony Smith and former 3rd District Alderman Michael D’Amato ruled that the incident was not a random act of violence. It was alleged that the student was involved in a drug transaction. Last year’s UWM area crime activity is characterized as an anomaly by Luljak, Because the Milwaukee Police Department cracked down on crime in the inner city, cons leaked over to the UWM area and began targeting students, he said. “There’s been no change in practice or policy when handling email alerts,” he said. “Fewer incidents means fewer emails.” But the numbers don’t seem to match. While there were slightly less robberies and aggravated assaults this semester, there was a sharp drop in the number of email alerts sent to students. Luljak believes that employing uniformed, unarmed students to patrol the streets at night has helped crime drop. Additionally, Luljak said the university bought two additional police squads that drive around the campus neighborhood. The student patrol team and the additional squads are funded by a $500,000 grant. Crimes Students Likely Didn’t Know About: Most of the email alerts in fall 2007 regarded armed robberies. Several incidents, often involving force or a weapon, occurred this fall and never were relayed to students via email: • On Nov. 2 at 10:50 p.m., a female walking in the 2800 block of N. Oakland Ave. was approached by two male suspects who demanded that she give up her purse. Both suspects implied they had a gun. • On Oct.14, at 10:15 p.m., four suspects knocked on the door of a residence in the 2100 block of E. Kenwood Blvd. When the resident opened the door, one suspect displayed a black handgun with a silver barrel and forced his way in. The other suspects entered and stole an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3, a flat screen TV and a laptop. • On Sept. 7 at 2:45 a.m., a female was approached by a male suspect in the 3000 block of N. Frederick Ave. who implied that he had a weapon and demanded her purse. The victim complied and handed over the purse. • On Sept. 2, at 2:19 a.m., there was a strong armed robbery in the 1900 block of E. Greenwich Ave. The victim was sitting in her car when she was approached by a male suspect asking her for a cigarette. The victim gave the suspect a cigarette and lighter. The suspect then reached into the vehicle and demanded her purse. Guidelines and Benchmarks? UWM’s guidelines that determine whether or not an email will be sent out are vague. (Read them here: http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/OSL/CleryAct/Timely%20Warnings.pdf) Universities have an obligation to issue timely warnings to the campus community if they believe a crime poses an ongoing threat, according to the Cleary Act. The Cleary Act also states that determining what is a risk to the student body is somewhat subjective. “We generally follow what the chief suggests. If she believes a crime is more than an isolated incident, students will generally be notified,” Luljak said. Luljack and other officials were not able to further clarify what constitutes an ongoing threat. UWM isn’t required to send email alerts under the “Cleary Act”, a law enacted in 1990 which requires universities to make crime data available to students. UWM can choose how to relay the information to students. The university began sending out email alerts two years ago to increase transparency, according to Luljak. “We’ve been criticized in the past for sending out too many. Students told us they don’t read them and that they don’t think anything could happen to them,” he said. “But the purpose of the emails is so that students can make informed decisions.” Luljak denied that the university has sent out less alerts because of criticism. He said crime around campus wasn’t as frequent during fall 2008. Mamarchev, the vice chancellor of student affairs, said after officials receive notification from the UWM police chief that a crime occurred, an informal committee meets and has a final say of whether or not to notify the student body through an email alert. The committee members include: Luljak, Mamarchev, the vice chancellor for student affairs, the vice chancellor for finance and administrative affairs, and the director of legal affairs, or their designees. Mamarchev said there’s danger to sending too many alerts because they may desensitize students to crime. “Every case is unique. You don’t want to send out an alert about everything simply because people will think ‘oh, there they go crying wolf again,’” she said. Students are emailed a crime report every October that outlines crime activity on university grounds during the previous school year. However, Lt. Koch said that most crimes occur in the neighborhood surrounding UWM, not on the campus. Student Reaction Many students believe that crime hasn’t dropped but that the university is deciding not to email as many alerts this year. While the emails often evoke annoyance among students, most said it’s better to receive the emails than not at all. “I hear about this stuff on the news, but the alerts don’t show that crime has been frequent,” said Alyssa Schwebke, 18, a freshman from West Allis, Wis. “I’d rather know what’s going on, and email is the most accessible way for students to know.” Some students said they don’t take extra precautions after reading an email alert. In fact, some students don’t read them at all and click “delete” after seeing its blaring subject line in their inboxes. However, most students said they’d rather receive these pesky reminders that crime does occur in urban environments. One student said he doesn’t pay much attention to the email alerts because he wouldn’t engage in activities that lead to becoming a victim of east side crime in the first place—such as walking home drunk late at night after. However, he said that the decrease in crime alerts is noticeable. “I think I got two this whole semester, last year we got them like every week,” said David Ben-Ami, 20, a sophomore from Madison. “I bet that they’re just sending out less alerts because I doubt crime stopped.” University officials wish students would keep their doors at locked all times. They wish students would stop walking around the campus neighborhood alone at night, especially while intoxicated. “Email alerts give us an opportunity to talk about safety and remind students to be aware of their surroundings,” said Mamarchev. At 11 p.m. on a fall evening that’s just chilly enough to see your breath, lone students walked along Locust Avenue, a street located two blocks south of the UWM campus. A young woman bundled up in a puffy coat and jogging pants feverishly talked on her cell phone—a common technique some students believe will deter crime if they have to walk alone at night. A few minutes later, a couple of young men walked in cadence, both clad in beanie caps, fleece jackets and a full backpacks. According to Koch, crimes, namely robberies, occur most frequently between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. The neighborhood is relatively quiet and well-lit on this night, an unsuspecting place for armed robberies, burglaries and home invasions. Check out the UWM police website here. Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:50:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=20806&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=20806&mname=Article v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 72 544x376 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The Scene By Saul Fofana Frontpage Milwaukee music beat reporter Dec. 16, 2008 Riverwest is known for being a diverse community, but not many people are aware that when peeling back the layers of culture found within this neighborhood, it’s easy to find that the heart of Riverwest beats for music. In Riverwest, the counter-culture thrives. Bars, cafés, and small clubs are littered throughout the community welcoming musicians of all types. In Riverwest, a diverse group of people collide with a diverse musical landscape to create a supportive environment for up-and-comers to make their mark. Not only do musicians get support from places like Bremen Cafe and Linneman's Riverwest Inn, but perhaps the most intriguing part of this community is the grass roots assembly of college aged students organizing their own shows, turning their basements into venues, and creating an underground music scene that is mostly unseen by the rest of the city. Who's running the show? While places like Linneman's Riverwest Inn are instrumental, and almost iconic for the music scene in Milwaukee, many of these venues only provide shows to the 21+ crowd. This is where 19-year-old Desmond Jones comes in. Jones came to Milwaukee for s chool but has fallen in love with Riverwest and now calls it his permanent home. “You see someone you know a few times every day, and you really get to know the people who run local businesses and support the community on a deeper-than-usual level,” said Jones. Jones and his roommates always planned to have shows at their place, and as other well-known underground spots started to close down for various reasons, they found the perfect opportunity to set up shop and keep the scene going. “Our basement has a suitable room. We installed some lighting and carpet and lined the whole thing with acoustic grade insulation, so that was all it took to get the space ready.” said Jones, “then it was just promoting it, we probably had 60 people at the first show.” Like many other bands and venues, Jones and his roommates contacted people to list their show on the Milwaukee Shows MySpace page which provides a comprehensive listing of shows in Milwaukee. And he and his friends aren’t the only ones, “There are quite a few people having shows, I'd guess there are 14 venues out there right now, like 7 of which are basements,” said Jones. Who's Playing? While many music critics have constantly attempted to write off Punk Rock music, it's alive and well in this community. The Do-It-Yourself mentality of the Punk scene is the backbone for the underground movement in town, and accounts for the majority of shows you'll find. “Many bands around here are of the punk rock persuasion and are too loud for places like Bremen Cafe,” said Jones. It's not only Milwaukee bands that thrive at these shows, “Almost every show we host includes a band from another state. Last week we had a band from Minnesota and a band from Illinois; Liarbirds and Giant Lakes, respectively. A guy called Matt K from Kansas did a great acoustic set here over the summer, and we've had other bands from New York, Indiana, etc,” said Jones. So what’s in it for the guys who volunteer their houses to entertain the fans and support these musicans? Jones said, “Any cover we charge is a donation to the bands involved. Touring bands play a lot, and gas is pretty damn expensive. $2-5 is standard, de pending on how many bands need funds.” Setbacks and controversy? “A lot of people look down on basement shows and think it's just some disgusting out-of-hand punk rock party. It totally isn't,” Jones explained. Many other shows get shut down by police for getting out of hand and disturbing the neighborhood, but Jones and his friends have a very respectful approach, "Shows are usually good parties, but really it’s about the music,” Jones said. “Neighbors don't care as long as things don't get out of hand, or stay too loud too late.” According to Jones a self-contained show at 10:00 p.m. on a Friday is generally left alone, but people partying in the yard at 11:30 p.m. on a Tuesday is frowned upon. A Fan's perspective: Rebecca Klemme is a student at UWM who regularly attends these shows. “It's something to do and somewhere to hang out with pretty good music, and it's just fun to listen to bands in the neighborhood and meet cool kids,” she said, “Usually, I hear about shows through word-of-mouth and Facebook events.” Klemme sees the underground scene as a pretty consistent operation in the Riverwest community, and she says it may even be growing. The shows that she usually attends consist of the Indie rock, folk, and electric genres. During her time at shows she’s seen bands come from nearby Chicago, Minnesota, and even Australia. So are most people like here going to shows to support the bands, or are they just looking for an excuse to party? “Probably most of the time it's 40:60,” she said, “but it's easy to party when you're listening to good music.” Another fan of local music is Adam Roach of the band The Red Shell. “I support local musicians because I feel like there are too many bands who don't actually put their emotions into their music and make it just for money, while these local bands are doing it because it's their passion.” When all is said and done, Desmond Jones wraps it up quite nicely, “Basement shows are a great way for musicians who don't have record label backing to get out there; there's a huge DIY ethic present. Totally awesome if you ask me.” Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:59:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=20233&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=20233&mname=Article By Krysta Legeros, Adam Van Vreede, and Beth Musni Frontpage Milwaukee investigative reporting team Nov. 23, 2008 Another parking ticket? No surprise there. Students on the UWM campus believe that the City of Milwaukee is taking aim at the area, using students, faculty, and staff as easy targets. Take the story of Mark Mileager, a student at UWM. “Parking has discouraged me from attending classes on several occasions, especially in the winter,” he said. And it's not only students. Some UWM employees have received over 200 parking tickets over the course of a few years just from parking in the university lots. They aren't just imagining things. District five, which includes UWM, is the top city of Milwaukee district in the number of parking tickets issued as well as revenue raked in. In an investigation for Frontpage Milwaukee, a team of student reporters set out to study city and university parking enforcement in and around campus and to see if the perception that UWM is being targeted by the city as a cash cow is true. The city has specifically targeted the UWM region for parking enforcement. The city raked in 25 percent of its parking ticket revenue from UWM’s parking region in the last year alone. The year before was no different at 24 percent. The student reporters found that the city issued over 220,000 parking tickets in the region surrounding UWM. The city also sends parking enforcement officers directly to UWM. Several open records requests were sent to the city after discovering Milwaukee possesses a database organizing all of the parking violations. The investigation proved difficult because of a variety of open records hurdles and delays in getting databases of parking tickets by both the city and UWM. Although the investigation collected violation records and data based on city and university information, there were a number of roadblocks. Despite numerous attempts to obtain a city database collection of all parking citation records, the City of Milwaukee’s Department of Public Works refused to comply with open records requests for months, and then tried to charge one $150 dollars per-hour as a recovery fee. The city denied the request to obtain the entire database, stating that it would be too timely and too costly to share the information with the public. The city offered to give a partial run, but at a cost of hundreds of dollars, claiming the database would need to be compiled by a programmer. The city provided a document proving that Milwaukee is divided into seven sections with the UWM campus area being one section by itself. Parking enforcement officers are deployed exclusively to separate sections. Another section is the Marquette campus. The two universities make up two of the seven sections in the city. Last year, the area around the UWM campus provided the most tickets and money from parking violations in the city. The grand total for the campus area was $19 million. The city parking regulation is not the only enforcement students-and faculty-have to worry about. UWM has its own parking enforcement, and there is evidence that the revenue earned has high importance to the university. UWM has a total of 30 all-student parking checkers, and deploys about three or four of them at a time to enforce parking regulations in all campus parking lots. Also, the university makes over $500,000 each year from tickets issued in the parking lots and metered street parking on campus. While park-and-ride lots are an option for students, the continuous frustration of students and faculty seems never ending. Claude Schutte, the Head of Communications for the UWM Parking and Transit Department, stated that the University needs appropriate parking regulations. Without these regulations “we’d have chaos,” Schutte said. The university provided a top 10 list of ticket getters after receiving an open records request. Amy Watson, who deals with UWM’s open records, initially told Frontpage Milwaukee that this list was not immediately provided due to concerns it would hurt UWM’s ability to earn the much needed ticket revenue from these frequent violators. A physician at the Norris Health Center at UWM has received 203 tickets during her career, and a faculty member in Letters and Science has received 202 tickets. “It has gotten worse since I was a sophomore. More specifically since they’ve changed the ordinances recently” said Heather Gabby, a senior at UWM. The Battle The team of reporters originally set out to uncover whether UWM and the surrounding area has drivers receiving more tickets than other areas of Milwaukee. An initial interview with Cindy Angelos, the Parking Finance Manager of Milwaukee, revealed that a city database houses all the parking tickets issued in Milwaukee but had to be broken down by district. The open records custodian for the Department of Public Works, Dorinda Floyd, soon took over the request for the parking ticket database and continually responded that the request be narrowed. An additional cost was also added on for the request to be fulfilled. “To extract one year of data would require at least 3 hours of work from a programmer and would cost $150 per hour,” said Floyd. A more general request for parking ticket revenues of districts and parking enforcement officer route information was then requested instead. Receiving information about campus parking came with its share of difficulties as well. Amy Watson, the open records custodian at UWM, provided total revenue of parking on campus broken down by lots. She also provided a list of the top people receiving parking tickets over the years, but initially said could not give out their names. While she said students are protected under FERPA, she claimed faculty and staff names would be jeopardizing to their reputations. In an e-mail, she wrote, “The school actually relies on parking tickets for revenue for its parking operations, so if people didn't get tickets because they feared their names would be released, it could actually reduce the amount of revenue that the parking operations take in.” After conducting a balancing test, as required by Wisconsin Public Records Law, she ultimately determined the public interest in releasing the information outweighed the public interest in withholding the information. The City’s Money Maker Parking tickets generate a large amount of revenue for the city of Milwaukee each year. While total parking ticket amounts are down since a spike in 2004, the city still grossed over $19 million last year and issued over 900,000 tickets. The district including UWM has the most tickets issued out of all seven districts. Last year 222,072 tickets were issued within the district. That is 24 percent of the total tickets issued for the entire year. Schutte, who is in charge of issues relating to parking on campus, was reserved in his comments about whether UWM is a target only saying that “the department of public works is actively ticketing around the city.” The City of Milwaukee has a total of 60 parking enforcement officers and deploys between 11 and 28 at a time to the five different areas. These areas include UWM, which consists of the area from Park to Edgewood and from Oakland to the lake, Marquette, Brady, Downtown and Walker. Floyd stated, “Typically we enforce every city street once every 20 days for night parking. Day time parking enforcement is limited to those areas with day time restrictions.” Between 7-8:45 a.m. and 5-7 p.m. an extra parking enforcement officer is sent to the area surrounding UWM to write tickets for not following specified parking restrictions. Over the last eight years, April has been the top month for parking ticket revenue on average, followed closely by March and November. The least amount of tickets are issued in December on average. Not surprisingly, all three top months are ones that students are present in Milwaukee. Headache on Campus Parking tickets issued on campus are also a large money maker for the school itself. UWM raked in over $500,000 last year from over 23,000 parking tickets on campus. In Sandburg Garage campus issued close to 6,000 parking tickets and in Union Garage there were almost 3,000 parking tickets issued from July 2006 to Jan. 2008. By examining university records, UWM earned $533,109 total from July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007. Lot 10, the Pavilion lot was the biggest money maker in this time period with $109, 936 total earned from parking citations. The Kunkle Center’s lot (located off of Kenwood Boulevard) was the second biggest ticket getter on campus earning $97,192. Schutte also cited how the revenue earned from parking violations is required to keep up improvements for faculty and students. “If you do not have ticket revenue, you just have to raise the rates of hourly parking,” Schutte said. When asked if there was a parking problem on campus, Schutte admitted that there were issues to be dealt with, but added that the money being collected by University parking citations was in fact going back into parking developments. As noted, the University hires around 30 students to be parking checkers on campus every year. Three to four checkers are out at one time following the designated route of parking lots every shift. While there is not a quota to fill on how many parking tickets must be given out each shift, there are usually plenty of tickets given out every day. While trying to park on campus at 9 a.m. on a week day, one reporter found every parking lot to be full on campus. The cheapest, the Union Parking Lot, was filled the quickest. Heading to the streets only brought frustration and streets that have resident only parking. A former parking checker for UWM, Andrew Greenwood, said while there is no quota for parking checkers to reach, “My personal best was 49 tickets in four hours on a Saturday morning once.” Student parking checkers work around their class schedules, so may work more when classes are done, “There might possibly be more ticket writers out during finals,” said Greenwood. “During some breaks, parking checking is suspended. There are a few days here and there that are free to park.” UWM has recently added satellite lots where students can park and get a free ride to campus. These are lots not on campus where people can park and be bused to campus. “Satellite lots work well, and the ticketing revenue helps pay for these lots.” Schutte said. “If you don’t have ticket revenue, you have to raise the rates of hourly parking.” City records show that Milwaukee splits its parking enforcement into five separate districts, and then sends out enforcement officers throughout various times of the day to distribute tickets to violators. Out of the five districts, UW-Milwaukee and Marquette are each their own district. Floyd, of the Department of Public Works, credits this to the fact that these campuses are so heavily populated, they deserve to be their own districts. City Parking Enforcement Officers are sent out in three shifts equally distributed among the five districts. The first shift requires 21 PEOs, second shift requires only 10 PEOs, meanwhile the third shift gathers 28 PEOs. The Targets With the University growing, more and more students are becoming disgruntled about the lack of parking options offered by the school and city. Adam Wanta, a sophomore student at UWM, lives downtown and commutes to school everyday. Since moving to Milwaukee in August, Wanta has collected about 30 parking citations from the city. He said that the amount collected near his home, downtown, was about equal to the amount collected on city streets around the UWM campus. “I have gotten so many tickets at this point I don’t really know what to do anymore or how to avoid it. It seems like I have no realistic options to park, but at the rate I’m going I just can’t afford it,” Wanta said. Another student, Paula Ryan, also has experienced a number of headaches from parking problems close to campus. Ryan has been the victim of over $500 dollars worth of parking tickets over the last four years. “I think they should be more lax about enforcing these parking restrictions until UWM comes up with a better situation for its students,” Ryan said. To avoid the parking situation facing the East Side, Ryan has adapted to using a park and ride off campus to get her to school and back. Thanks to options such as the park and ride, Ryan has never been discouraged from attending classes. “It has been very frustrating, but I really enjoy attending UWM, so I am willing to put up with the irritating parking situations,” Ryan said. While getting a parking ticket is never an enjoyable experience, the parking situation around the UWM campus has truly affected some of the students’ and faculty members’ lives. Said Wanta, “It seems like I have no realistic options to park, but at the rate I’m going, I just can’t afford it.” Many students believe that they are being targeted specifically because they are usually in a rush to get to class and can’t leave to move their cars. Many students are also unfamiliar with the areas and unusual regulations. Jeremy VanSliedrecht, a former resident of the East Side said, “Seems like a lot of tickets stem from being unfamiliar with the law or unaware of situations like a snow emergency or street sweeping.” Since campus safety has been brought to the campus community’s attention recently, some students have even claimed that limited parking is making them feel unsafe at night when having to walk a long distance to their cars. “I hated walking alone at night, so sometimes I would drive around for while hoping to find a close spot” said Jaynee Peterson, a student who moved to Shorewood in part for the better parking situation. While a real problem exists, Shutte believes that satellite lots are the answer. “The master plan will surely be additional parking options through Satellite lots and other expansion plans beyond the UWM campus,” Shutte said. There are also plans to purchase city grounds in Wauwatosa for the expansion of additional satellite lots. Until a solution is found however, students and faculty will continue to be irritated by the parking situation on campus Milaeger said, “I feel it is kind of limited to this little area, and if you don’t get there at a good time you best be prepared to walk a while.” Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:49:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19974&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19974&mname=Article By Muamon Yang Frontpage Milwaukee High-Tech Gadgets Reporter Nov. 18, 2008 With every beep or chime it controls you. Your cell phone is only an object, but you cannot leave home without it. Sure, it makes phone calls, sends text messages and takes pictures. Let’s face it; the cell phone is a Godsend. But to every gift, there is a dark side. A bit above average height at five feet eleven inches, with a buzz cut and blue eyes, Sean Deely, an international business major at UWM, recounts an email he received regarding things you didn’t know your cell phone could do. “I’ve gotten this chain email,” said Deely. “It had a list of things that I didn’t know cell phones could do.” Thinking that they were just urban legends, Deely quickly dragged the email to his trash bin. “But you can’t help but wonder it they are really true or not,” Deely said. Just like many other myths, these urban legends do have some truth behind them. Frontpage Milwaukee has selected a few of the most awkward and infamous urban legends to investigate. Frontpage Milwaukee will unveil the truth about these urban legends and other misconceptions about cell phones and the mystery surrounding it. *#06# According to the email, dialing *#06# on a cell phone in this specific order displays a set of 15 numerals. The chain email claims that the numerals are unique and can be used to shut off the cell phone if it were ever stolen. The email recommends writing it down and keeping the numerals with your records. Some Internet users also believe the numerals may help the government keep on eye on us. With our research, dialing the code on an iphone did reveal a set of 15 numerals. “It’s hilarious to hear about people being so excited about finding out the code to show their phone’s IMEI. Not everyone can be Nicolas Cage from National Treasure,” said Mera Yi, a student who once worked as a supervisor for a small distributor cell phone company The numbers are also known as the International Mobile Equipment Identity or IMEI. Although the IMEI is essentially what the cell phone providers use to identify each individual phone, it’s not necessary that the customer know it, Yi said. Unlock your car over a phone call “I’ve never tried it but I think it could work,” said Anthony Willborn, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student. Within the chain email, this stunt begins after you’ve realized you have lost or locked your keys in the car. If you have an extra pair of keys (remote keyless entry) at home, you call home and have someone push the unlock button. The signal should then transfer over the cell phones and –voila- your car is unlocked. Countless videos can be found on You Tube demonstrating that it actually works. “That’s amazing! It looks sweet on camera, but it could easily be faked,” said Willborn, after watching a demonstration on Youtube. According to Mythbusters, a TV show dedicated to debunking urban legends, remote entry devices work at a frequency in-between 300 – 500 MHz. Cell phones however, operate at 800 MHz. “Different frequencies and coding systems. They speak different languages on different continents,” said Abbas Ourmazd, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Don’t know what to believe? Check out the video on the FPM homepage to view a test conducted by Frontpage Milwaukee. Cancer for You and I Rumors of cell phones causing cancer have floated around ever since their introduction to the public in the late 1970’s. This past July, Ronald B. Herberman, MD, sent an in-house email to his staff members at the university of Pittsburgh, which triggered mass panic across the Internet. According to the Associated Press, the email stated that children should limit their exposure to cell phones because their brains are still growing. Further analysis of the email however, revealed that his concern is based on unpublished data still in its early stages. Raja Khan was a manager at a private distributor of Sprint. Although there is a lot of concern circulating in regards to cell phones and cancer, Khan said only twice did customers ever ask about it. “You can get sick with drinking too much soda. Used moderately, there shouldn’t be any problems,” Khan said. However, unlike soda the FDA does not review cell phones. The FDAdoes have the ability to step in if the FDA concludes that cell phones are a health risk. In their statement regarding cell phone health issues, the FDA stated that scientific evidence has not linked cell phones with any health problems. According to the FDA’s findings, the low levels of radiofrequency released from cell phones do not cause any known adverse health effects. The biological (heating) effects of radiofrequency energy should not be confused as other types of electromagnetic energy. Such as X-rays and gamma rays. Reports show that these have been known to damage human tissue and DNA. Prefessor Ourmazd said, “The power radiated by a cell phone is far too low.” Khan, whose currently militant occupation is in Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Operations, also believes this fact. The FDA statement reports that two parts of the body can be vulnerable to radiofrequencies. Until further research is conducted, the FDA recommends distancing your cell phone from your eyes—and for guys, keeping your cell away from your groin. Grave of the Bees Some initial studies had concluded that cell phones and power lines are the cause of the decline of bee populations worldwide. Tim Fulton, Vice President of Wisconsin Honey Producers Association (WHPA), doubts cell phones are to blame. Not to say he hasn’t noticed a decline in his bee population, because he has. It probably has more to do with pathogens and nutrition than cell phones, Fulton said. Andy Hemken has had his beehives in his backyard for about 12 years. Hemken is the club president of the Milwaukee Waukesha Beekeepers’ Association. He has noticed a decline in his bee’s population as well. “Bees have been declining in populations for over 100 years,” said Hemken. Decades before cell phones were even used. In his years of experience Hemken was able to diagnose the reason for the death of his bees. But in recent years, Hemken is baffled. “Recently, it’s been a bit spooky,” said Hemken. Some studies have shown that a genetically enhanced variety of corn can be toxic to bee larvae, Hemken said. Verizon: Can you hear me now, McCain? Some myths call attention to the special treatment given to movie stars and people in high places. And, in most cases there are completely fictional—unless if you’re John McCain. On October 16, 2008, The Washington Post published an article suggesting that Verizon Wireless and AT&T had given special treatment to John and Cindy McCain. Reports showed that Verizon had looked into erecting cell phone towers at Senator McCain’s Arizona ranch. Although the original plan was never completed, The Post’s investigations showed that Verizon had a 200-page environmental assessment completed, hired consultants, archaeologists and contacted Native American tribes. After abandoning the project, Verizon decided to give a portable cell tower to the McCain’s in June, free of charge. AT&T later followed with their version of a portable cell tower too. Verizon released its statement saying they did not give McCain special treatment. The McCain’s had submitted a request and Verizon chose to pursue it. AT&T responded that they were giving accommodations to AT&T customers involved in the campaign of a presidential nominee. You’ve read about a few cell phone myths; now take a look at how cell phones could have helped moved movie plots quicker. If all movies had cell phones - watch video here. Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:12:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19896&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19896&mname=Article By Allison Hellweg Frontpage Milwaukee You Tube reporter Nov. 8, 2008 Did you miss the last Obama-McCain debate? Or how about that Charlie Gibson interview where Sarah Palin is stumped by the concept of the Bush Doctrine? Have no fear, user-generated media is here. Nation, welcome to the first official YouTube presidential election. YouTube has changed the presidential campaign in ways that were not before possible: It has allowed candidates a vessel for free advertising. It has enabled users to share their support and dislikes for candidates in similar communities. It has played a huge part in magnifying the gaffes that ultimately alter voters’ perceptions of the candidates. Using YouTube for political info According to a Pew Research Center study conducted last spring, 35 percent of all Americans said they had watched online videos related to the campaign. That is triple the level of campaign videos watched in 2004. The research center also found that 1 in 10 Americans interviewed had either forwarded or posted a political video. College students are increasingly migrating to the Internet for their political information. The Internet is no longer a subcomponent of the campaigns, but the only place to find the campaign represented as a whole. “If it weren’t for YouTube, I probably would have just read about the debates instead of going back and watching them,” said UW-Milwaukee student Saul Fofana. For the 2008 election, YouTube created a channel titled YouChoose ’08, which features each candidate’s official campaign YouTube channel. Here, users are allowed to view speeches, events, and TV ads that have not been filtered through the mainstream or alternative media and allow the campaigns themselves to become complete media operations. Together, Obama and McCain’s channels have received over 100 million views. Obama’s famous speech on race alone has been viewed over 6 million times. How the candidates use YouTube One notable difference between the two candidates is the way in which they use this opportunity for free advertising. While John McCain tends to concentrate on TV-like ads that often time focus on criticizing his opponent, Barack Obama is using YouTube more often to display speeches and appearances, as well as send out messages to a more narrow audience, according to the Personal Democracy Forum, a site that concentrates on how technology is changing democracy. The way each candidate has used YouTube in slightly different ways may have to do with their intended audience. Many would argue that Obama tends to receive much more citizen support through the video-sharing site. “YouTube has undoubtedly helped Obama more than it has helped or hurt any other candidate,” says Professor Michael Newman, who studies web video at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “Especially because his supporters tend to be young and hip, and young and hip people figure out new things like YouTube quicker than old and square people.” Obama’s 1,500 video posts have received 80 million views while John McCain’s 300 have received 20 million. The participatory media It is true that you will find more participatory media on YouTube that lean in Obama’s favor. In fact, only 0.25 percent of the election content on YouTube is from the actual campaigns. Examples of this political participatory media include the music video “Yes We Can” featuring Will.I.Am of The Black Eyed Peas and the wildly popular Obama Girl, which includes music videos and sketches posted by BarelyPolitical.com. James Kotecki is well known in the media and is called by The Economist “the world’s foremost expert on YouTube videos posted by presidential candidates”. He also has an award-winning political video-blog that can be found on Politico.com. “It is a chicken and egg problem in doing this analysis,” says Kotecki regarding whether Obama is gaining more support online because of the generation of his voters. “But Obama voters tend to be younger and more Internet savvy.” Kotecki is confident that college students like himself are receiving their political information online regularly. “There is a solid argument for not owning a TV at all, because now shows are free and legal online. I rarely use mine.” The amateur and the professional alike have contributed not just support for their candidates, but spoofs and mini-documentaries that oppose the other candidate. And no one gets it worse than GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Many amateur videos of Palin impersonators are also popping up all over YouTube, depicting Palin bashing herself for her ignorance and inexperience. Palin has become a favorite to imitate and criticize in the world of web video. Who could forget Tina Fey’s scarily accurate depiction of the Alaskan governor on SNL? On the other hand, Gina Gershon makes a poor attempt at bashing Palin by parading around in an American flag bikini with a hunting rifle. The gaffes Sure, the parodies mock the candidates in an amusing way. But Palin has taken criticism for her own social blunders that can now be viewed by millions on the video-sharing site. One of the most popular was what some called her discomforting interview with CBS reporter Katie Couric, which has now been viewed by over 5 million people. In another interview with Charlie Gibson, it is revealed that Sarah Palin is not aware of what The Bush Doctrine is. The truth is that all politicians make mistakes and say the wrong things from time to time. But before YouTube, not nearly as many people knew about it. Obama has taken his own hits, such as when pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his angry rant were released on YouTube. “It is not one specific video or type of video that effects the candidates’ campaign,” says Kotecki. “It’s that YouTube totally changes the paradigm for campaign communication. Everything is now permanent and viral, and it totally changes communication from a one way broadcast channel to an audience that is interacting with other members of the audience in ways they never have been able to before.” Like everything else, YouTube has its positives and it has its negative aspects. Whether you believe YouTube has benefited the way in which we experience the presidential campaign or not, it is definitely here to stay, forever changing the world of politics. Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:04:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19779&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19779&mname=Article By: Ellie Reischl Of the Frontpage Milwaukee staff Oct. 31, 2008 With Wall Street doing a two-step all over everyone’s bank accounts, the Halloween costume trend this year boils down to a simple equation: Creative = Cost-friendly. At Bartz’s the Party Store on 108th St entire, aisles pay homage to everything Halloween. From fishnet stockings and faux facial hair to full-garb Joker costumes and open head wounds, this store sends fanatics into frenzies. In fact, tragic Heath Ledger’s dramatic turn as the makeup-wearing Joker is a top seller. (Halloween Express, Glendale)—“To infinity and beyond!” UWM junior Jake Venes gets help from a friend trying on a Buzz Lightyear costume. This was Venes’ second choice, as Halloween Express was sold out of this year’s best selling costume, The Joker. Photo by Noelle Steffen, FPM photo editor. Some costumes are pegged to the news: One Milwaukeean reported a friend was dressing as Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter. Laura Rehorst, 31, assistant manager at Bartz’s says that the trends for college-aged people are definitely more creative this year than last. “I’m not sure if it’s economy driven, but I see more people coming in the store to buy accessories for costumes they have already made at home,” says Rehorst. In other words Milwaukee, it’s time to put on thinking caps, hats, wigs, masks, and face paint and dare to walk down that dark alley as something new for Halloween. Creative Costumes “The most creative costume I have ever seen was a man who was going as Chicken Cordon Bleu,” laughs Rehorst. “He planned to wear all blue, with rubber chickens tied to his outfit using cords.” Quaintly situated on the corner of North and Humboldt, Closet Classics Caffeine serves up a cup of joe with one-of-a-kind vintage outfits. It is a creative costume Mecca. With two floors packed with costumes including everything from 1970s era men’s suits and old bridesmaids dresses to flapper get-ups and sexy police officer outfits, this unique place gets the creative juices oozing. “People this year are being really creative,” says Emily Treolo, 25, an employee of Closet Classics. “I have seen one person go as a chair. They could even sit on themselves!” Saving Money Last year, Nalissa Wienke, a 21-year-old student at UWM, dressed as a Grecian goddess. Her costume was homemade with most of the supplies purchased at an area Michael’s store. A white pillowcase with added gold embellishments was her dress and a gold sash and gold flowers for her hair topped the costume off. “This year, I want to save money, so I am going as an 80’s fitness instructor. I went to Value Village and bought Spandex bottoms and a sweater that I will cut to open the neckline. I found leggings and a headband at Target and borrowed some jewelry from my mom,” says Wienke. Rachel Hintz, also 21, says she has seen someone go as a s’more and they didn’t spend any money. “They used pieces of cardboard as the graham cracker, painted another piece of cardboard a dark brown as the chocolate, and found white fabric for the marshmallow,” Hintz says. Will Wilson, 24, and Amber Waiter, 26, have both seen some creative costumes. Wilson says he saw a man dressed as a hospital gurney. “The guy was yelling ‘Terri, don’t die!’ referencing Terri Schiavo.” “My favorite is for this year. A friend is going as Sarah Palin’s pregnant child, Bristol,” says Waiter. Don’t think that humans are the only living creatures that can enjoy costumes. The beloved family, Cujo, can also prance around town as anything their little pet heart desires. Katie Milella, 22, is going Trick-or-Treating this year with her Shetland sheepdog, Abby. “Abby wore a hotdog costume, I wore a mustard costume, and my mom wore an apron filled with grilling utensils. We were a walking picnic,” says Milella. With creativity injected into the veins of Milwaukeeans, there are bound to be a few bust ideas. “The worst costume I had ever heard of was a woman who was going to attach doughnuts to her body as her costume. Her husband was going to go as a cop,” says Rehorst. For those who wish to purchase their costume already made, Rehorst says the trend seems to be anything sexy for the ladies and The Joker for the men. She also says that the trends seem to correlate with the summer blockbusters, hence the Joker costumes. Although no Pirates of the Caribbean movie was raised from the dead this year, both Rehorst and Treolo agree that pirates are mighty popular matey. Happy Halloween, Milwaukee! Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:49:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19640&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19640&mname=Article Listen to the student journalists discuss their project on Blog Talk Radio. By Melissa Campbell, Eric Amenda, and Mara Muccio Oct. 27, 2008 Online or distance education courses at UW-Milwaukee do not have specific policies or standards to determine exactly where the money goes when students pay to enroll in these classes, even though the university pulled in over $1.3 million in fees during the 2006- 2007 academic school year. Even though students are shelling out more and more money for online classes, the university doesn't have any standards to regulate how high that total can ultimately get. Furthermore, each department has its own individual fees for each of its online courses, as well as its own policies. Unlike tuition at UWM or other UW schools, the fees for online courses generally fly beneath the scrutiny of the public and go relatively unnoticed. Except by students. History major Nick Kane has never taken an online class. And cost is a big reason why. “I probably should’ve, but it’s too expensive,” he said. Twenty five percent of UWM students enrolled in online courses last year, and shelled out hefty fees on top of tuition, yet neither the university nor the UW system tracks where the fees are spent in a comprehensive way, a four-month Frontpage Milwaukee investigation found. Click here for a sample online course syllabus. The newspaper focused in on three UWM schools as a case study; since no records existed outlining how much these schools make in online fees, neither at the University nor at the System level, the student journalists attempted to generate the numbers. Cross-listing grade rosters and course schedules for the 2006-2007 school year, they determined that combined the three schools raked in approximately $1.5 million from online class fees. The Frontpage Milwaukee investigative team spent four months analyzing the policies, trying to follow the money, and finding and testing the rationale behind the fees. The student journalists focused on the College of Letters & Sciences, School of Information Studies, and the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business. Together the three UWM schools examined by the journalists make up over 60 percent of the total online enrollment. The reporters investigated how the fees are set, and how the money generated is tracked. They found it a difficult task—there is no definitive way to find out how much money the schools collected from online fees, nor how it is spent. The investigative team examined course fees and enrollment from 2002-7. The fees, like tuition, have been rising during the past five years. Likewise, online course offerings and enrollment have also been increasing. In 2002, there were roughly 30 online classes; last year, there were over 200. Six times as many students enrolled in online courses in 2007 than in 2002, according to a report published by the UWM Online Program Council. The investigation revealed extreme differences in the way the three schools determined the fees, and also in the fees themselves. One school tied the fee increase to state tuition hikes, while another factored convenience into the fee. “Schools have considerable autonomy in setting pricing and determining online course offerings,” said Laura Pedrick, assistant to the Provost of Academic Affairs. The methodology behind online course fees and the paper trail following the revenue is far from transparent, the Frontpage Milwaukee investigation found. The investigative team learned that the money made by the schools is lumped in with the general budget, after the university takes 20 percent, making it impossible to trace. The team was unable to find a university-wide standard regarding how the online class fees should be charged and how the resulting revenue should be spent. The UW system policy has vague wording and gives schools a lot of leeway in distance education pricing. The policy only holds schools accountable for the number of students that enrolls in online, not for the money they make as a result. In the end, students pay the ultimate price. “That’s bad,” said Kane. “We think it’s reasonable to attach a fee that is directly connected to this particular activity,” said UWM Dean G. Richard Meadows. “But do we track each and every nickel to each and every one of these expenses? No.” A UW system policy sets forth certain requirements for distance education, or online classes, fees, but the wording is vague and gives schools a lot of leeway to decide how much they will charge students. In fact, the policy allows schools to use high demand as a factor in charging these fees, something one UWM school does in part. While the policy requires institutions to identify the costs of distance education using a common method, no such consistency is required for charging course fees. They can be calculated at the program or even at the course level, meaning that the fees and reasoning behind them can vary widely within one institution. Fees from UW school to UW school differ also. The University of Wisconsin charges no additional fees for online classes, while UW-Eau Claire charges a mere $10 per online credit. “Any courses a student at Madison takes, be it online or otherwise, are charged the same rate,” said Craig Stevens, from the tuition assessment department at UW-Madison. Other schools like UW-La Crosse and UW-Whitewater charge fees only for online graduate business courses, $202 and $360 per credit respectively. Online class fees have become just one of the numerous costs college students incur. They are piled on top of ever-increasing tuition, segregated fees, differential tuition and textbook costs. “I don’t think there’s any reason for an extra fee primarily because you aren’t using any supplies or school materials,” said UWM student Molly Zoromski,. Adam Schleis, another student, agrees. “There’s no point” to the fee, he said. “Doesn’t it make it easier on the professor? I would think that they would be cheaper.” Zoromski and Schleis aren’t alone in their sentiment—many students wonder why, when they seem to use less university resources, cost so much more. When you think of going to a university or to college, students often think of the face-to-face interaction and communication with the teachers and classmates. Some feel online courses can create a new and different bond between teachers and students that is helpful in learning course material. “It engages students in a way I've never seen in a face-to-face class,” said Dean Meadows of L&S. Not all schools have the option available for their students to take online courses. In that regard, online courses are unique and offer things that normal traditional courses cannot. The idea of online courses is a relatively new idea in the grand scheme of how school and taking classes is generally thought of. With the advent of newer and ever-changing technologies, the unusualness of online courses will continue to significantly drop. Perhaps the answer for this team investigative reporting project can be summed up in one quote by the Learning Technology Center’s Budget Director, Bob Kaleta. He said, “If you want us to break down how much percentage goes to online learning that’s near impossible.” Understanding online class fees According to, Who are UWM online learners, a power-point presentation, created by Assistant to the Provost for Strategic Initiatives, Laura Pedrick, in the fall semester of 2007, the three colleges that the majority of students enrolled in online courses were the College of Letter and Science (36 percent), the School of Information Sciences (19 percent) and the School of Business Administration (13% percent). Online class fees are charged additional to off-campus tuition, which is roughly $100 less per credit than on-campus tuition. This tuition applies to courses held outside of the UWM campus, as well as to online courses. UWM’s online class fees are 28 to 38 percent of the cost of one three-credit course. “We take a look at what the school is going to do for a tuition increase, and try to come in a little below,” said Chad Zahrt, the assistant dean of the School of Information Studies. Even the way that fees are charged is not the same. Some schools include tuition in the fees charged for online classes, while others just charge an additional fee; as a result the fees range from $267 to $1026 last year. The College of Letters and Sciences charged an online class fee of $267 above off-campus tuition, while the fee charged by the Lubar School of Business and the School of Information Sciences was tuition subtracted from the fee charged by the schools, $222 and $253, respectively. “For undergrad courses, the price was…roughly equivalent to resident undergraduate tuition,” said Zahrt. “These fees count as tuition.” The extra fees, school deans said, are used to pay salaries for technical support and for online course development. “Generally it’s used to pay some salary; we have one person solely dedicated to online support,” said Zahrt. The revenue generated from online classes, he added, also goes toward providing support to faculty who need to use different or specialized software for teaching. “We look at all of our expenses. We have expenses for our IT office. We have expenses for what we pay faculty and staff to develop the courses,” said Tom O’Bryan, the associate dean of the College of Letters and Sciences. “And so we total it all up, and that’s about what we get.” But as O’Bryan, admitted, schools in part charge fees for convenience. “It’s a way of providing a service to students who are busy.” The college is taking advantage of market opportunity, as allowed in the UW policy “Distance Education Pricing Principles,” passed by the Board of Regents in June 1999. Taking an online class is convenient, said UWM student Mary Dresser, but “they shouldn’t charge a fee because it is convenient.” Budget cuts might be driving the fees as well. An article published in the Boston Herald in 2006 reported that online classes at the University of Massachusetts cost twice as much as traditional courses. The school president said that the university needed the extra money due to budget cuts, adding that students are “willing to pay nearly double the price of a regular class for the convenience of taking it online.” While UWM students don’t pay nearly as much as those at U-Mass, UW schools face the same budget issues. “All schools on campus are chronically under-funded,” said College of Letters and Sciences Dean Meadows. “If you just look at the state budget and how much of the college is supported by the state budget it’s no where near the total amount of money that we spend and so we’re always looking for ways to try to figure how to make ends meet.” As budgets shrink, students shoulder more of the fiscal responsibility for their education. “The amount of money we get to educate per student just drops each year, ” said UWM professor Kathy Dolan. “Unfortunately, some of these things get passed along to students.” Innovations in teaching Professor Diane Reddy of the Psychology Department created an innovative section of Psychology 101 based off of this new system of learning. The Upace section of Psychology 101, is a course that is structured in regards to setting students up for success based on how much material they master within the course’s semester-long time frame. It is a self-paced way of learning that is mastery based, with the key component being intrusive negative word – attribute support by not only the professor but by teaching assistants as well in order to reach out to students who are having difficulty with the course material. This intrusive support can be by email, by phone or in face-to-face, whatever way the student prefers to communicate and learn. In other words, students who take this course set their own pace in completion of not only the course work but in the mastery of the material. For example, the grading scale relies on how many quizzes the student completes successfully. The quizzes are set up in a way that students can only pass them if they’ve really mastered the material. The course is set up for a weekly quiz to be taken on a small section of the course material but in order to be eligible to take the quiz the student must review each and every link of material online first before the site will allow you to take the quiz. And the student has to take the quiz repeatedly until they score high enough to move on to the next quiz. So in order for a student to receive an A, they must complete 23 quizzes successfully. Upace is an extremely successful teaching method, which engages students to learn more, even past the general expectations of the course. In a study of students in a Upace section of Psych 101, Professor Reddy calculated that 90 percent AP style of students who already had an A in the course went on to do additional coursework. When you log onto the D2L site, there is a video of Professor Reddy, welcoming you to her course. The next links are videos of students who have excelled in the course. On this interactive D2L site, there are review activities to help students with the mastery of the terms and definitions like time saving flash cards, crossword puzzles and matching games. So, there's no question that online teaching is offering students some creative ways to learn. What some students want to know, however, is where the extra fees they pay for the courses go. The policy and the oversight The lack of regulation by UWM and by the UW system is surprising, considering the way that special course fees are handled. The UW system has very specific rules regarding the way that special course fees can be determined. A 2006 policy says that the “Chancellor and his or her designee(s) must approve all special course fees and must document and maintain records of that approval.” Furthermore, the fees, while they can be charged to pay for certain costs excluded in the regular instructional budget, cannot be used to pay for salaries and wages for the “normal consumption of materials” by students purchased by the university, nor can they be used to pay for computers, software, and laboratory equipment. These specifics do not occur in the policy regarding distance education pricing. “We do not have a report that breaks down pricing of distance education,” said Gail Bergman, a UW System administrator. UW Schools are only required to report to the system how many students take online courses. The data is compiled into an annual report. Last year, UWM led the state with the largest online enrollment, 19,000 students, compared to 3,600 enrolled at the University of Wisconsin. The rewards and the rationale Online course fees mean big money for UWM schools and colleges, calculations made by the investigative team revealed. The College of Letters and Sciences accounted for more than one-third of the online enrollment at UWM and made more than $880,000 in extra fees during the 2006-7 school year. The most profitable semester was the 2007 Summer Semester—the college made approximately $278,000 from only 44 online course offerings. Comprising nearly 20 percent of online enrollment, the School of Information Studies collected more than $631,000 from course fees. During the Spring 2007 Semester, the school’s most profitable semester, SOIS made around $278,000 from just 11 online course offerings. The Lubar School of Business made nearly $74,000 in online course fees. The school made up 13 percent of online enrollment last year. Six courses netted the school almost $40,000 during the Fall 2006 semester. In total, 67 percent of UWM online students contributed over $1.5 million to the three schools. These schools told the investigative team that they needed the extra money to provide support for online teaching and to develop online classes, yet the university provides this service to departments and teachers regardless of online class fees. The Learning Technology Center manages Desire2Learn (D2L), the online learning environment used by the UW system, for the campus, conducts faculty development programs, and holds technology workshops, said Alan Aycock, the Center’s associate director. The faculty development programs are aimed at teaching instructors how to teach online. These have about 20-30 participants each year, last a few weeks, and combine 10 hours of face-to-face workshops with individual work submitted via a D2L site. “Their focus,” said Dolan, “is to help you figure out, when you’re used to doing something in the face-to-face format, how you can move it to the online environment and what aspects of the online environment exist that cause you to rethink what you’re doing.” The program is aimed at helping instructors and students succeed in online courses, said Learning Technology Center Director Bob Kaleta. Teaching online, he adds, is fundamentally different from teaching in a classroom. Although not all instructors complete the training, Kaleta said he strongly encourages it. Those who do the training are “undoubtedly more successful.” And those who don’t? “For faculty who don’t do the workshop, we see them coming in with problems once the course starts,” he said. Part of the money made by the School of Information Studies, Zahrt said, goes to pay the salary of Milton Wong, the school’s distance education technology assistant. “My responsibilities with the SOIS online program is mostly managing courses that the school provides,” said Wong. “I support some of the faculty by aiding them with setting up their courses before the beginning of each semester.” Wong also helps with other various technical needs of faculty, such a creating lectures in audio or video format, or creating simple websites to host course material. Additionally, Wong said, he helps students taking online courses within the school. “I try to solve student problems as fast as I can by fixing the problem on the course site, Google the problem, or I ask the student to contact the UITS department for further assistance with the problem.” While the School of Information Studies offers these services specifically to their faculty and students, they are not unique services. The support provided by Wong is also provided by the Learning Technology Center and also by the University’s Information Technology Services department. Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:09:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19540&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19540&mname=Article By Aaron Bladorn, Michael Korpela, and Karen Paschke For months, student investigators waded through unchartered waters in attempts to obtain the text messages of elected officials, and state, city, university, and county workers. Since the Detroit Free Press exposed Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick’s affair with his then chief of staff Christine Beatty in January 2008, the use of text messaging in government has received the public’s attention. A team of Frontpage Milwaukee journalists set out to learn how common taxpayer-funded text message use is by public officials and state workers. Could reporters obtain the messages themselves, as occurred in Detroit? The four-month investigation by Frontpage Milwaukee reporters - that included many phone calls, dozens of interviews, and nearly 25 Open Records requests - faced bureaucratic standstills, as well as hesitant and defensive secretaries, records custodians, and officials. Not private Text messaging from taxpayer-funded cellular devices is not as private as many government officials may have once thought, as abuse of the technology has made headlines, and journalists’ ability to obtain text messages may soon redefine what is considered public record. What the team of three student journalists discovered: Local government officials are using text-messaging devices, often at the taxpayers’ dime. The state of Wisconsin alone funds 400 such devices. But officials are not quick to share those messages with reporters, even though they fall under the open records law. Instead, they stalled responses to requests and even outright denied reporters access to the messages. The team sent out numerous open records requests to specific government agencies, with varying response: • Waukesha County provided the team with names, positions, and model of 11 blackberry devices purchased with a Public Health Preparedness Grant. The county also provides 259 cell phones a to employees with an annual cost of approximately $29,000. 350 text messages were sent and received from cell phones over a six-month span. • The Wisconsin Legislature provided a list of names, positions, service providers, and monthly charges. 16 Senate employees, including 8 Wisconsin Senators, have blackberry or smartphone devices. Senators listed include: Joseph Leibham, Mary Lazich, Mark Miller, Luther Olsen, Judy Robson, Dale Schultz, Lena Taylor, and Kathleen Vinehout. • Milwaukee County supplied the team with a list of 144 employee names, position, and department with blackberry devices. Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway is most notable. • The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee provided a list of 27 employees with blackberry and smartphone devices. University Chancellor Santiago has a TREO smartphone. Men’s Head Basketball Coach Rob Jeter has a blackberry. • The City of Waukesha provided the team with records pertaining to annual costs of devices as well as amount of devices. The 2007 cost for 117 devices was $41,597. No record was provided that detailed employees with blackberry and smartphone devices. The reporters were not able to obtain the text of a single message, however. Not much scrutiny Wisconsin government officials’ use of text messages has never come under much scrutiny. Frontpage Milwaukee set out to learn how easy it was to obtain public officials’ text messages. Confusion and disbelief reigned among many of the agencies and counties that Frontpage Milwaukee reporters contacted for this story. Wisconsin open record laws calls for all state employees to be accountable for complying with records laws and requirements. Records available for the public to request include: • Handwritten, typed, or printed documents. • Maps and charts. • Photographs, films, and tape recordings. • Computer tapes and printouts, CDs and optical discs. • Electronic records and communication. Blackberries and smartphones are covered under the electronic records and communication. However, the fact that blackberry devices are only recently becoming prominent for government use gravely affected the group’s goal. No text messages were obtained through the entire four-month process of requesting records. Also, no entity had a repository of text messages and many had no document that listed blackberry and smartphone users before the team requested such information. This negatively affected response time from all entities. It appeared that text messages are not the easily accessible public record that public officials' emails have become: There is often no record available of how the taxpayer-funded devices are being used. This may in part be because the open records law predates the novelty of such electronic communication; much of the confusion focused on the law’s definition of a public record, and whether text messaging falls under the description. “In my opinion Wisconsin's open records law may apply to text messages. Our law took its present form in the 1981 session of the legislature; the law very obviously could use a review that would take into account new technologies and the uses to which they are put,” said attorney Ron Sklansky. The Frontpage Milwaukee reporters found that Wisconsin state employees and government officials are hesitant and cautious when replying to requests for text message information. Some of the officials do have text messaging devices, however. Lack of cooperation While many agencies and counties were helpful and willing to work with reporters, others were uncooperative and at times unresponsive to requests. "I think that if we just provide her the list of BB (Blackberry) users, and the cost for the data plan last year, we could be done with this,” said Milwaukee County Chief Technology Officer Dan Popp after accidentally forwarding a conversation with Chief Information Officer Dennis John to Frontpage Milwaukee reporters. The governor's office found the request curious. “You’re looking for information about the Governor's cell phone--- for what?,” said Carla Vigue of the Office of the Governor after reporters asked about Governor Doyle’s use of text messaging. Waukesha County Waukesha County’s Department of Administration willingly participated with Frontpage Milwaukee investigators for this story. Requests for information were met with few delays, and responses to emails and phone calls were replied to promptly. Nearly 190 of the county’s cell phones fall under the standard pay-as-you-go plan; $3.00 monthly service and 5 cents a minute, according to IT administrative assistant Marilyn Michaelis. “Monthly service ranges from $24.50-$39.96 a month depending on the specific plan where the users have options such as sharing minutes, receiving free in-coming, and free mobile-to-mobile,” said Michaelis. In February 2008, Waukesha County implemented new cellular contracts, and according to Michaelis there is “no true history” regarding the county’s usage costs, which were requested by reporters. The new contracts, however, are supposed to offer the county substantial savings from their previous fixed monthly service of over $3,500. Under the new contract, the county hopes to save nearly $1,000 a month. For 2008, the state of Wisconsin’s Department of Health and Family Services (DHFS) awarded $201,260 to the Waukesha County Public Health Division. Waukesha County's PHD began receiving the Public Health Preparedness Grant, formerly known as the Bioterrorism Grant, in 2002. The grant is sponsored by the Federal Center for Disease Control (CDC), which distributes funds to local public health divisions through DHFS. Waukesha County provides blackberry devices to 11 employees within the Public Health Division in accordance with the Public Health Preparedness Grant. The role of blackberries is to increase the channels of communication between public health workers and to meet the following goals. The grant requires the PHD to complete numerous goals by December 31, 2008 that include: • ability to engage in a continuous planning process to respond to public health emergencies. • participate in a public health emergency exercise or real event. • ensure channels of communication between local and regional partners in terms of public health emergencies. • achieve the Emergency Preparedness Core Competencies for all public health workers. Bill Duckwitz, a financial analyst with Waukesha County, stated, “According to PHD management, the purpose of the grant is allow local public health divisions to build their capacity to handle biological or natural disasters that occur on a local, regional or national scale.” Waukesha County employees given blackberries include: public health supervisors, an epidemiologist, the clinical services manager, and the human services coordinator. Waukesha County also provides 259 cell phones to its employees with a fixed monthly service of $2,451.32: • 190 have a $3 monthly service charge and are pay-as-you-go • 69 phones are in pooled plans that range from $24.50 to $39.96 for monthly service. • $.39 per overage minute • $.20 per out-going text message • Free in-coming text messages Only 15 to 20 users have used the text messaging capability on their cell phones over the past six months. As Norm Cummings, Waukesha County Administrator stated, “In the last six months there have been 350 messages which at $.20/each would be $70.” Options such as sharing minutes, receiving free in-coming, and free mobile-to-mobile are available with specific pooled plans. The fixed monthly service had previously been $3,502.74 per month. Waukesha County believes the new plan is exponentially better. “It is hoped that there will be a significant savings.” City Administrator Norm Cummings, as well as a host of Waukesha County employees provided information pertaining to the open records request. When asked if blackberry and text message information should be stored, he stated, “The central repository or record storage for cell phone information will certainly be added to our discussion.” UW-Milwaukee The open records request was referred to UWM Administrative Program Specialist, Amy Watson. Watson provided the investigative team with records on 27 UWM employees with blackberry or smartphone devices. The team verbally requested text messages from Men’s Basketball Coach Rob Jeter, Dean Carlos Santiago, and Vice Chancellor Tom Luljak. UWM does not have a central repository for text messages. Therefore, Watson personally requested whether they have text messages stored on their devices. All of them stated that they did not have any stored text messages. A request placed with UW-Milwaukee Open Records Custodian Amy Watson was returned to reporters on April 14, 2008 revealing a list of 27 current university employees who utilize devices capable of text messaging. Reporters requested the messages of three UW-Milwaukee employees; men’s head basketball coach Rob Jeter, Vice Chancellor of University Relations and Communications Tom Luljak, and Chancellor Carlos Santiago. According to verbal inquiries made by Watson, none of the employees who were requested had stored messages on their state-issued Blackberry or Treo. Although every device used by UW-Milwaukee employees have text messaging capabilities, Chief Information Officer Bruce Maas said that generational differences in technology use may be a reason why texting is rarely, if at all used. “First of all, I don’t believe that text messaging has caught on, it isn’t really an issue with administrators,” Maas said. Even though he has a state-issued Treo from UWM, he said he does not text message for business because he simply “doesn’t have time to”, he does however text on his personal device, which he said has unlimited messaging. According to Maas, there is no one monitoring text message content on the IT level, and because UW-Milwaukee does not store text message information, reporters would have to supply US Cellular with a subpoena before they would release the information, which is only kept for 5 days on US Cellular servers. Milwaukee County Dan Popp who works for the Information Management Systems Department at Milwaukee County dealt with the open records request. Blackberries are prominent in many County positions that require advanced communication including: supervisors, managers, and information specialists. 61 of the 144 blackberries are assigned to the Airport Department and Information Management Services Division. A comprehensive list of names, departments, and titles of 144 employees was compiled for the team. However, Milwaukee County was not forthcoming to an open records request for blackberries and text messages. An email conversation between Popp and Chief Technology Supervisor, Dennis John, stated, “I think that if we just provide her the list of BB users, and the cost for the data plan last year, we could be done with this.” he lack of determination displayed by Milwaukee County in dealing with open records law was apparent throughout the four-month process. Reporters had numerous difficulties finding the proper records custodian, obtaining useful information, and receiving timely responses when reporting on Milwaukee County. While a list of county employees with state-funded devices was eventually received, cooperation from Milwaukee County employees was limited, and the information reporters received was incomplete. Of the information received, however, reporters uncovered that of the 145 devices in use by the county only a handful of them have the text messaging capability turned on, according to CTO Dan Popp. After carefully reviewing the list of users with text messaging devices an Open Records request was placed with the county for the overall cost of every county board supervisors cellular bills for the past two years. A formal response to Frontpage Milwaukee’s request has yet to be received. Wisconsin State Legislature Robert Marchant, Chief Clerk of the Wisconsin State Senate dealt with the open records request. Marchant provided the team with a list of 16 Wisconsin Senators and staff employees with blackberry or smartphone devices, service providers, and a four-month inquiry of each employee’s bill on April 28. The release of records pertained to an April, 4 2008 formal request. The average monthly bill for every blackberry or smartphone was between $32.00 and $40.00. Service providers of blackberries and smartphones were U.S. Cellular, Nextel, Verizon, and Alltel. Senator Vinehout of the 31st District averaged the highest cost of Senators for her device at $44.99 per month between January and April of 2008. The investigative team was told that the request would take time throughout the month of April and that a fee of $50 or more would most likely be included. No fee was included in receiving the records. The lack of a central repository of employees with blackberry and smartphone devices as well as text messages greatly affected the timely release of records. The Wisconsin Legislature also added to this situation by taking the entire month of April to compile the list of names, service providers, and the four-month inquiry of billing. After dozens of phone calls, emails, and messages to various legislators went unanswered, Frontpage Milwaukee investigators sent out eight open records requests. Under the Wisconsin Open Records Law an elected official is considered the legal custodian of their own records and the records of their office, so reporters placed official requests individually to Senate President Fred Risser (D), Senator Lena Taylor (D), Senate Chief Clerk Robert Marchant (D), Assembly Chief Clerk Patrick Fuller and Representatives Michael Huebsch (R), James Kreuser (D), and Jeff Fitzgerald (R). Direct requests to legislators or representatives for information regarding state-funded phone and text messaging use, would, per state statute, fall under authority of the individual official being requested. Some officials like Senate President Fred Risser, and Reps. Huebsch and Fitzgerald promptly responded to the open record requests, “I do not and never have utilized a state-funded Blackberry or smart phone device,” Risser said to reporters’ email inquiry. An official open records request was submitted to Sen. Lena Taylor on April 8, 2008 with a list of questions detailing the information Frontpage Milwaukee sought to obtain. Nine days passed before a response was received. The letter failed to provide the requested records, but instead forwarded correspondence to Senate Chief Clerk Robert Marchant. “Under the advice of the Senate Chief Clerk, I am writing to inform you that this office is not the custodian of that record… I have referred your email to Chief Clerk, Robert Marchant, and encourage you to direct your request to his office.” Willingly complying with the request from Sen. Taylor’s office to direct future correspondence to Chief Clerk Marchant, one centralized open records request was placed with his office. Wisconsin Open Records Law states that requests should be fulfilled in a reasonable time-frame, generally within 10 days. A formal response from Chief Clerk Marchant took over 3 ½ weeks. No text messages were ever received. City of Waukesha The team sent a formal open records request pertaining to blackberries, cell phones, and text messages to Mayor Larry Nelson dated April 8, 2008. City Administrator, Lori S. Luther was referred to the request on April 16, 2008. She replied to the investigative team in a letter dated April 21, 2008. Included in the document was information regarding service provider, annual cost, and monthly cost of city funded cell phones. No information pertained to blackberries, smartphones, or text messages. Luther cited Wisconsin Statute 19.35, which does not require an authority to “create a new record by extracting information from existing records and compiling the information into a new format.” No repository of blackberry and text messaging information exists. The City of Waukesha is on pace to lower its cost in 2008 for mobile devices by approximately $5,000. Verizon Wireless is the current service provider. The 2007 annual cost for operation of 117 devices was $41,597. U.S. Cellular provided service in 2007. The first quarter of 2008 bill for these devices was $9,251. Luther stated, "The documents and information you request is not available in an existing record.” The team made an effort to contact the city by phone in order to specifically request information on blackberries and text messages. Numerous calls to the city and specifically Luther were not returned during this process. Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:53:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19209&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=19209&mname=Article By Alex Boeder Sept. 14, 2008 adboeder@uwm.edu Students at UW-Milwaukee are getting lower grades than at any time in the past decade, but most students are still averaging almost a B, as grade inflation scandals have erupted at other schools, particularly in the Ivy League. Even with the slight dip in GPA, students still averaged a 2.90, which is better than a B-. And 55 instructors gave their students all A’s. Altogether, those instructors had 1258 students. For students and administration alike at UW-Milwaukee, the falling grades pose questions, but there is no simple answer to explain this complex subject. Indeed, the fall 2007 numbers are likely to tick up even higher after grade changes are accounted for after students retake courses. In fall 2007, based on average GPA for all sections with at least ten students, the toughest grading teacher on the UW-Milwaukee campus was Susan M. Gordon in one section of her Physics for Health Professionals (110) class. Gordon’s 001 section, which consisted of 69 graded students, had an average GPA of 0.956. According to university standards, Gordon gave out an average grade of under a D. “My job is to present the material to get across what Physics is, and to develop analytical thinking. It’s up to the individual how it’s received,” Gordon said. Certainly not all students received such low grades at UW-Milwaukee, however. The teacher who was arguably the most lenient grader on campus in fall 2007 was Jose Rivera. For instance, all 126 students in three of Jose Rivera’s sections averaged straight A’s. In Rivera’s two University Choir courses, his 89 students averaged a perfect 4.0. In Men’s Glee Club, all 37 students got A’s. James Hill, Dean of Students at UW-Milwaukee, blamed the declining grades on a lack of high school preparation in part, also saying it is difficult for students to devote enough time to academics since many are working to pay for school. “With the rising cost of secondary education, many students are working 20, 30, even 40 hours per week to be able to afford it,” he said. This four-month Frontpage Milwaukee investigation is based on data from fall 2007 in the Office of Assessment & Institutional Outreach’s 2007 Grade Report, as well as the 2007/2008 Fact Book. In order to determine individual specifics such as the highest and lowest graded courses, teachers, and sections, the team of Frontpage Milwaukee journalists transferred the grades into three Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, totaling more than 3,000 entries. From there, the team applied formulas and manipulated the data, resulting in original research and statistics. Grade inflation amassed great attention early this decade, especially at Ivy Schools such as Harvard. An American Academy of Arts and Sciences report revealed that 46 percent of grades received at Harvard were A’s in 1996, compared to just 22 percent in 1966. Widespread grade inflation prompted Princeton to go as far as to formally adopt a grade deflation policy in 2005. The investigation also found: *There were far more high scoring classes than low. In all, 57, or 3.3 percent of courses with at least 10 students received perfect 4.0's. On the other end of the spectrum, a mere 29, or 1.7 percent of courses with at least 10 students received under 2.0 average GPA’s. *Low-level courses often received lower grades on average than high-level courses. Of the 126 sections that received a C or lower, 87 of them, or 69.0 percent were 100-level or below classes. Seventeen were remedial Mathematical Science sections. *Some sections within the same course had wildly different grades. For example, one professor in Math 95 gave a 4.0 to her section while another professor in the same course gave a 1.28 GPA. *The more experienced the student, the higher the average grade: In fall 2007, freshmen averaged a 2.67 GPA, a far cry from the 3.14 that seniors averaged according to the 2007/2008 Fact Book. Students pursuing a doctoral degree averaged a 3.76 GPA, slightly better than an A-. *An internal UWM report reveals that average ACT scores of new freshman did not drop in 2007 since ten years ago. The average ACT score of a new freshman in 1998 was 21.84. In 2007 the average score was 21.98. *Although it’s hovering around B range, UW-Milwaukee’s average GPA is lower than some of its counterparts in the University of Wisconsin System. UW-Stout, a fellow four-year university, had a 3.09 GPA in its latest report for 2007-2008, higher than UW-Milwaukee’s at any time in the last ten years. UW-Green Bay’s average GPA meanwhile, has been higher than UW-Milwaukee’s in each of the past seven fall semesters. *Furthermore, the universities say the fall grades will likely go up somewhat, after students retake courses and the new grades are inputted. Toughest Graders Lying on the corner of E. Kenwood Blvd. and N. Cramer St., the Physics Building appears from the outside like many of the surrounding buildings in the west quad of UW-Milwaukee’s campus. An accompanying planetarium is the one distinctive feature of the relatively small and skinny brick building. Stepping inside at 7:42 on a Wednesday morning, the building is sleepy and as quiet inside as Cramer St. outside. Physics 135 is a lecture hall and the location of Physics for Health Professionals, a class that meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. No classes start earlier in the morning at this university. Like a stadium, the lecture hall slopes sharply down, but there is no field or court at the bottom. Instead, a massive green chalkboard stares up at the hundreds of orange seats, four of which are filled with 13 minutes before class is scheduled to start. Susan Gordon, arguably the toughest grader on campus last fall, emerges from a backdoor at 7:50. At the start of class, 26 students are seated. Clad in black dress pants, a blue shirt, and short brown hair, Gordon declares: “we’re going to start on the spectrum.” As she turns to the chalkboard, students turn their heads down while they jot notes on paper. While the professor’s voice carries through the spacious room, the students make as much noise as the gentleman who is interpreting and conveying the lecture via sign language: None. Halfway through the class, Gordon turns off most of the humming, overhead fluorescent lights. She turns on a “black light,” which weakly glows a purple tint, and discusses the uses and effects of ultraviolet rays. When you go tanning, you expose yourself to ultraviolet rays, she explains. What does the “x” in x-ray stand for? Gordon explains that Wilhelm Roentgen, credited with first discovering x-ray technology, didn’t know where the rays came from, and thus the “x” stands for the unknown, as in algebraic formulas. She goes over the pros and cons of x-rays, before asking in reference to the rays, “What’s the truth about this, is it good, is it bad?” A few minutes later, Gordon invited the class, in thirds, to collect their third exams. The unknown “x” in this case was the all-important grade. Perhaps students nervously thought to themselves, “Is it good, is it bad?” Gordon’s Physics for the Health Professionals 001 section was the lowest graded section at UW-Milwaukee of the fall 2007 semester with at least 10 students. Over half the students in the section failed the class: Thirty-nine students, or 56.5 % of the section, got F’s. In contrast, just three students, or 4.3 %, received either an A or A-. Gordon taught three sections with at least 10 students who received a 2.0, also considered a C by university’s grading scale, or lower. In addition to the previously cited section, Gordon also taught the only other section of Physics for the Health Professionals (110), which averaged a 1.615. Her Quantitative Preparation for Physics (100) class didn’t fare much better, averaging a 1.981 in fall 2007. Cammie Sallenbach, a sophomore majoring Occupational Therapy, took Physics for the Health Professionals in spring 2008 because it is required to apply for her major. She said that the grading in the class is fair, and she really likes Gordon, who forces her to work independently and make the most of her resources. She would recommend the class only to those who are willing to do the same, because the class is not easy. “I would probably say that this class is the most difficult class I have. It is a lot of work and I have to dedicate a little bit of time each day for it,” Sallenbach said. Virginia Palaszewski, a senior and former student of Gordon’s in Physics 110, said she found the course difficult and at times confusing, and indicated the class did not have a textbook. She also recalled noticing that many students skipped the class. Palaszewski in part credited visiting Gordon’s office hours once per week with helping her attain a B- in the course. Gordon recommends that students attend class, visit her during office hours, and seek tutoring if necessary. “I am committed to a high standard of education both in what I bring to the classroom and in what I expect from my students,” Gordon said. As any seasoned college student knows, the end of the semester turns the tables, as students evaluate their instructor’s performance. According to one comment on an evaluation attained through public records findings, Gordon’s course proved challenging, but in a good way. “This class was a great challenge for me. It taught me to work harder. I wish more teachers would challenge us more,” according to the anonymous student. On the other hand, it wasn’t enough to simply avoid failing for a different student who purported to excel in other courses. “I have a 3.9 and I’m getting a C in this class. This class had me in tears many times,” according to the anonymous student. Based on average grades, Gordon’s Physics courses aren’t the only difficult ones at UW-Milwaukee. Gordon’s sections were just three of 127 with at least ten students that averaged a C or worse. In addition, Physics for the Health Professionals is not unique in that it is a low-level class that receives low grades on average. In fact, the vast majority of the low-scoring classes were entry-level or slightly above. Of the 126 sections that received a C or lower, 87 of them, or 69.0 percent were 100-level or below classes. Seventeen were remedial Mathematical Science sections. Essentials of Algebra (95) is a remedial class, which means students do not receive any college credit upon completion. Students are placed in these classes because they do not attain the necessary scores on placement tests after high school to enroll in college Math courses for credit according to the Math Department. If students get a C or above in these remedial courses, they become eligible to enroll in Math classes for credit that are necessary for graduation according to the timetable on the university’s web site. Samuel Lilla took Math 90 in spring 2007 with Ludmilia Demetieva. He said Demetieva, who went over practice problems on the board and helped students if needed, explained the material well. He also offered some personal insight into why the course yields a lot of low grades. “Because people know they are in the lowest course, not getting any credit for doing the class, some just don't care,” Lilla said. Professor Allen Bell, the Department Chair of the Mathematical Sciences Department at UW-Milwaukee, said that he would prefer to not have grades, and that he lets instructors run classes how they see fit. “We all have our own standards. Some teachers are harder than others,” Bell said. Bell also said that there is not a mandate regarding grading in his department. He did indicate that Letters & Science recently undertook an initiative to improve large classes with a large amount of freshman that had many D’s, F’s, and withdrawals. A course Bell taught, Math 211, was redesigned as a result. Without Teaching Assistants, the course implemented online quizzes in place of graded homework. Bell has perceived a spike in grades, but since instructors changed at the same time as the format changes, he is unsure what is responsible for the rising grades. Top ten lowest graded courses with at least 10 students (Fall 2007): Physics 110 - 1.241 GPA - 121 students Philosophy 217 - 1.478 GPA - 23 students Political Science 423 - 1.572 GPA - 42 students Geoscience 105 - 1.674 GPA - 240 students Computer Science 151 - 1.706 GPA - 17 students Philosophy 351 - 1.708 GPA - 16 students Theater 321 - 1.732 GPA - 62 students Geoscience 150 - 1.751 - 332 students English 612 - 1.77 - 14 students Astronomy 103 - 1.784 - 326 students Easiest Grading Teachers Overall, most teachers handed out relatively high grades, making the aforementioned low ones stand out even more. In fall 2007, 367 sections with at least ten students averaged a 3.8 average or better GPA. A 3.8 falls in between an A and A- on the university’s grading scale. Some sections even got straight A’s, including one in Essentials of Algebra, the course in which Olenchek gave 40 F’s and just one A. Every single one of Joan Subichin’s 21 students in her 095 section received an A. Did Subichin just happen to get all smarter students? That is impossible to gauge for sure, but the far more likely explanation is a sharp difference in teaching methods. Subichin’s section was a pilot class, which means students were exposed to different methods of teaching and learning than in Olenchek’s and the other sections of the same course. According to Bell, the pilot originally was intended for students who had scored lower on their placement tests who could benefit from a different structure, but now the class is pretty much open to anyone, though students with weaker backgrounds are advised to take it. The pilot section covers the same material as the other sections, but it is presented differently, with an eye toward the future. Bell said it is a computer-based section, and that students spend more time perfecting the concepts so they can move on to the next lesson. The important difference is that students cannot advance to the next lesson before accurately completing the previous one. “Since it’s mastery based, if you get through the material, it means you really know it,” Bell said. The vastly different methods of teaching resulted in one of the largest GPA ranges of any two sections of the same course at UW-Milwaukee in Fall 2007. Subichin’s 095 section averaged almost three full grades higher than Olenchek’s 010 section. The results of the teaching evaluations were not so starkly different. Subichin’s two sections combined netted 18 “excellent” or “very good” ratings and no “poor” votes according to the anonymous evaluations. Based on data from Olenchek’s four sections combined, 73 students rated his overall performance as “excellent” or “very good” and just one student gave him the lowest rating, “poor.” Each student in Subichin’s class received an A, and some indicated in the evaluations that they enjoyed the nature of the class, which often resulted in students working on their own. Others commented negatively about ALEKS, the name of the online program relied on so heavily in the section, when asked about what the student did not like about the class. “The ALEKS program. The teacher can demonstrate problems in an easier and more logical manner,” wrote one student when asked about what they did not like about the class. The fact Subichin’s low-level class received such high grades was a rarity in itself. Of the 367 sections that received a 3.8 or higher with at least 10 students, only 54, or 16.5 % were 100-level or below classes. This follows the trend that more inexperienced students score lower grades. In fall 2007, freshmen averaged a 2.67 GPA, a far cry from the 3.14 that seniors averaged according to the 2007/2008 Fact Book. Furthermore, students pursuing a doctoral degree averaged a 3.76 GPA, slightly better than an A-. Bell noted that part of the explanation could be that poor students are weeded out as they go through school, leaving the better students for the higher-level classes. Bell said he noticed from personal experience that higher level courses tend to receive higher grades. Judging by that, not many of Jose Rivera’s students will be weeded out in the Music Department. All 126 students in three of Rivera’s sections averaged straight A’s. In Rivera’s two University Choir (45 and 51) courses, his 89 students averaged a perfect 4.0. In Men’s Glee Club (44), all 37 students got A’s. None got even as low as an A- in these three sections. Top ten highest graded courses with at least 10 students (Fall 2007): Psychology 690 - 4.0 GPA - 73 students Business Management 711 - 4.0 GPA - 51 students Music 45 - 4.0 GPA - 51 students Curriculum and Instruction 336 - 4.0 GPA - 48 students Music 44 - 4.0 GPA - 39 students Curriculum and Instruction 326 - 4.0 GPA - 39 students Journalism & Mass Communication 450 - 4.0 GPA - 39 students Architecture 190 - 4.0 GPA - 38 students Nursing 997 - 4.0 GPA - 37 students Music 51 - 4.0 GPA - 37 students Overall GPA Decline A USA Today article in 2002 cited an American Academy of Arts & Sciences report that 46 percent of Harvard students in 1996 received A’s, compared to just 22 percent thirty years earlier. Also in 1996, the report indicated, 82 percent of Harvard seniors graduated with honors. Widespread grade inflation around the country, particularly at Ivy League colleges, has resulted in media scrutiny as well as grade deflation policies at Princeton, which limited A’s to an average 35 percent according to a 2007 USA Today article. According to the Yale Daily News, Yale stopped releasing grading reports after 1981, when it reported that 80 % of grades were A’s or B’s. Yet at UW-Milwaukee, the trend is the opposite, as grades are falling. Students in fall 2007 averaged a 2.90 GPA, better than a B- and close to a B. Still, despite the fact that 56 courses received 4.0's and there were far more highly graded courses than low, the 2.90 average was the lowest in the past ten fall semesters according to the university’s 2007/2008 Fact Book. Moreover, it marked the fourth straight year that GPAs have fallen. In Fall 2003, the average GPA was 3.04. Since then, it has dipped from 3.01 to 2.99 to 2.98 and finally 2.90. The falling GPA statistics reported in the Fact Book are slightly misleading however. Different GPA’s are reported for the same semester in different UW-Milwaukee Fact Books from year to year. For example, the 1998 Fact Book indicates that the average grade for fall 1998 was 2.94. The 2007 Fact Book shows that same fall 1998 semester to have a 3.03 GPA. This is a relatively large discrepancy despite the seemingly slight overall changes. Chris Jacobson, who works in UW-Milwaukee’s Office of Assessment & Outreach as a Policy & Planning Analyst, revealed some reasons for the inconsistencies, most notably that students retake classes and attain higher grades, which are reflected in the newer fact books. “While the greatest portion of this change can be explained by "F" grades being replaced when students repeat a class, I'd like to also mention that students can receive an incomplete grade and then after satisfying the course requirements will receive a letter grade sometime later. This will also affect average GPAs,” Jacobson said. As such, the 2.90 GPA reported for Fall 2007 likely under represents the actual performance of students at the university relative to prior years. Fact Books in the future will reflect retaken classes and the GPA will likely slightly drift up. “I would assume that there would also be an increase in the GPA for Fall 2007 when the reports are again calculated for the 2008-09 Fact Book,” Jacobson said. Other Universities Although the average GPA is expected to climb, UW-Milwaukee’s most recent 2.90 average is still lower than some fellow University of Wisconsin System schools. UW-Green Bay’s average GPA for 2007 was 2.94, the eighth straight year that they have had a average GPA at least as high as UW-Milwaukee. Dr. Deborah Furlong, Director, Office of Institutional Research at UW- Green Bay, also indicated that the university’s average GPAs are subject to change for many of the same reasons that UW-Milwaukee’s are. Namely, students retake classes and grade change petitions are addressed following original publication of Fact Books. Meanwhile, UW-Stout reported a 3.09 average GPA among all students in 2007/2008. UW-Eau Claire does not calculate average overall GPAs in any of their standards reports according to Andy Nelson, Institutional Planner at the university. Other Interesting Findings While the GPA statistics reported in the Fact Book from year-to-year are imprecise, they never indicate a recent upward trend in GPA. Even without including the data from fall 2007, the university’s average GPA has not gone up since fall 1999 to fall 2000, when the GPA rose from 3.04 to 3.06. So while grades are not going up, the number of students is. Bell perceived that enrollment has risen dramatically in the past few years, and he is right. According to the 2007/2008 Fact Book, there were 22,895 students enrolled at UW-Milwaukee in 1998; by 2007 the number had jumped to a record 29,358, a 22.0 percent increase. Also in 2007, the university admitted its largest number of new freshman, 4,535. That doesn’t necessarily mean the university is admitting anyone who applies, however. On the contrary, the average ACT score of a new freshman in 1998, according to an internal UW-Milwaukee report, was 21.84. In 2007, the average score was 21.98. The percentage of students admitted that placed in the top half of their graduating high school class in 1998 was 61.65 percent, slightly lower than the 63.71 percent in 2007. The fact students are working during school is only one of many possible reasons why getting good grades is increasingly difficult. Students at UW-Milwaukee are actually getting younger on average, and they are also taking more classes. According to the 2007/2008 Fact Book, the average student was 26.4 years old in Fall 1998. That’s almost a year and a half older than average student in Fall 2007, who was just 25.0 years old. The work load for the increasingly young student is growing too. In fall 1998, students averaged 11.3 credits per semester. In fall 2007, that number increased to 12.7. A standard course at UW-Milwaukee is worth three credits, so the average student in 2007 took over four classes per semester. Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:46:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17934&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17934&mname=Article By Rose Davis Frontpage Milwaukee News Editor August 8, 2008 The Loss of a Legend There have been almost daily news updates concerning the status of Brett Favre and whether he will play for the Packers this season or if he will be traded. The news is finally in: After a more than five hour talk with Coach Mike McCarthy and a number of disagreements that he could not put behind him, Favre has officially been traded to the New York Jets. For many Wisconsin college students, Favre is the quarterback of our generation, the one we’ve grown up with. There has been little opportunity for this demographic to get their opinion out there, so I sat down with several students to get their view on the situation. UW-Milwaukee students Lee Wisinski and Dave Taylor have been life-long fans of Favre and , although they are unhappy with the trade to the Jets, both agree that they will still be supportive of Favre. “I will be supportive of him just because he is the only quarterback for the Packer’s I’ve ever known, as far as I can remember Brett Favre’s been the quarterback and he’s been friggin’ awesome. I will route for him to do well but I’ll want his team to do bad still,” said Wisinski. “And if they ever played the Packers I wouldn’t care that he was for the Jets it would be all about the Packers,” said Taylor. Molly Boyle, a student at Cardinal Stritch University, didn’t feel quite as passionate about the issue. “I don’t really care what he does,” she said nonchalantly, “I don’t really follow football that much, but I know who Brett Favre is. I think that he should have stayed with the Packers even if he had to compete for his old position because if he’s as good as he thinks he is he would have gotten the starting position back.” When asked if they thought reinstating Favre five months after his retirement was the right thing to do Taylor replied, “He’s pretty much the greatest quarterback of all time; he should be allowed to play.” Wisinski agreed and Boyle as well, however she commented that, “If would have been anyone else I would have said no, but it’s Brett Favre. He has a following.” Both Wisinski and Taylor were also in agreement that Favre should have accepted the Packers' $20 million marketing deal, in which they would be allowed to continue using his name on merchandise and for other marketing although he was no longer a player. “I think he misled the Packers,” said Wisinski, “He was kind of flip-flopping on the whole retirement thing. I just wish he would have taken the money because I don’t want to see him play in another uniform.” “I think the $20 million was kind of a slap in the face though, because it’s not really about the money for him, you know, he just wants to play,” said Taylor. Boyle thought Favre did the right thing by turning down the offer saying, “I feel like he owes it to his fans to come back.” When it comes to laying the blame for this entire situation, it seems that all agree that both sides are guilty. “You can’t put the blame squarely on the shoulders of either party because the whole situation has been just a big gray area. The one thing you have to give the organization credit for is that they basically stood firm all the time that they didn’t want him to play for their team again and they moved on once he retired. That doesn’t really lesson the blame at all for them, I think they probably should have catered to Favre more, given his legacy and the legend of Brett Favre in Green Bay, but you got to give them credit for sticking to their guns,” said Wisinski. “I don’t think you can really assign all the blame to either one of them but I think the organization is a little more at fault here. I think they should have been more accepting of him. Favre did kind of switch it up on them and they did already have plans with another quarterback, (but) if any team has the opportunity to have Brett Favre, I mean how could you say no?” said Taylor. “No, I don’t think they are entirely at fault because if he wasn’t 100% sure he wanted to retire he shouldn’t have done it. You can look at it both ways. He shouldn’t have said he was going to retire unless he was sure, but maybe he thought he was. I think they should have taken him back just because he’s Brett Favre. 16 years of service I think he deserves a second chance.” It seems as though there could be no happy ending for this legend. “I think the whole situation is just a catch-22 and there’s no way that the fans are going to win. The only person that can benefit from this situation from now on is Favre, and maybe the Packers if they can get a decent draft pick in a trade for Favre…I guess the Packers can gain something for the organization but I don’t know if it would ever be equal to if they had let Favre come back and play for them another season,” said Wisinski. Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:44:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17917&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17917&mname=Article By Rose Davis Frontpage Milwaukee News Editor rmdavis2@uwm.edu August 4, 2008 Students from UWM’s Advertising and Public Relation Campaigns class were awarded second place in a national competition to develop a marketing campaign for the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) this past May. As part of a nationwide “green means go” campus challenge, the 21 students in the class were instructed to develop a campaign targeting 18-25-year-olds by encouraging transit as a green option. This included the development of a slogan (‘Think Green Now, Thank Yourself Later) and logo, public relations materials, public service announcements, radio and TV spots, print ads, billboards full bus wraps, web banners, a youtube video and myspace site. UWM was selected as one of three finalists from 10 campuses around the county and sent four students to present the class’ campaign in front of a group of highly regarded specialist judges in the fields of marketing, advertising and public relations. The students in attendance were junior Leigh Jursik, senior Kelly Olson and ’08 graduates Kristine Schumann and Michael Wozalla, who were accompanied by Professor Becky Crowder. “It was just really cool,” said Crowder of their experience in the competition. “It was an opportunity of a lifetime.” Edventures Partners was the sponsor of this annual competition, which participants must be invited to partake in. For UWM, it started with the Chevy Super Bowl Ad competition in 2007, a nationwide competition sponsored by Chevy to develop a commercial for its new campaign, the American Revolution. Out of 820 entries from 230 schools, UWM student Katelyn (Katie) Crabb won this competition and had her ad featured during the 2007 Super Bowl. As a result, this accomplishment caught the attention of EdVentures Partners, which invited UWM to participate in the campus challenge this past spring. UWM has been invited to participate again in the fall. The fall challenge, Branding the Intelligence Community, is a branding campaign for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Crowder is extremely proud of all the hard work her students put into the project. “It provides an opportunity that simply doesn’t happen locally and they get to work with a national subject,” she said. The class worked with local marketing director of the Milwaukee County Transit System Jakie Janz, who Crowder wanted to be sure was given credit for her contribution. Visit www.myspace.com/gogreenninja to check out videos and other information from the campaign. Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:19:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17910&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17910&mname=Article You can peruse detailed spreadsheets of Wisconsin business closings here. By Paul Whitelaw Gorski Nearly 300 Milwaukee businesses filed plant closure notifications in the past 28 years, affecting thousands of workers and forcing the city to adjust to a falling manufacturing base, a Frontpage Milwaukee investigative has found. Milwaukee’s closings represent 19 percent of the 1803 statewide closings posted over that time period; affecting 31,729 Milwaukee workers. Recent announcements by area businesses have fueled sky-is-falling rhetoric about Milwaukee’s business climate. A Frontpage Milwaukee student journalism team spent four months analyzing state workforce development plant closing documents to determine if the recent Milwaukee closings are an aberration. The team found that the number of closings is rising but the worst years were several years back, and the closings are not unique to Milwaukee. The Bowling Congress is relocating, Miller Brewing Company is moving its headquarters and Harley-Davidson announced a significant downsizing. Yet the data suggests that Milwaukee is not a desolate island in a sea of prosperity. There is a state wide shift occurring from large manufacturing plants to smaller, more diverse enterprises. In 1985, during the first upsurge of closings, 11 plants closed but at least one small machine shop opened. Trade Tech, Inc. rented a small, aluminum-sided building in Milwaukee and serviced machines and manufactured parts for the then flourishing leather industry. During 1995, the waning years of the second wave of closings or relocations, Trade Tech was also on the move. They moved 272 feet, according to Google Maps, into a 33,000 square foot concrete block building kiddy-corner from the now semi-demolished Pabst Brewing Company. Nine plants closed in 2007, the year that Trade Tech packed its bags and headed out of Milwaukee. The worst years for Milwaukee included 19 closings in 1993 and 18 to 19 in 2000, 2001 and 2003. The closings in 1993, according to Pat O’Brien, the executive director of Milwaukee 7, can be attributed to a recession and increased globalization. He attributes the closing in the early part of this decade to the end of the dot-com bubble and the end of an economic cycle. He said whenever the economy is slow, the weaker players are lost and the rest have to make changes to survive. It’s difficult to compare Milwaukee to other Wisconsin cities, but Milwaukee’s cycle of closings doesn’t appear to be an anomaly compared to Wisconsin as a whole. Annual business closing data for both flow up and down together. The team analyzed data from the Plant Closing and Mass Layoffs information collected by the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. Businesses with more than 50 employees must follow guidelines detailing when the department needs to be notified of a closing or layoff. The team of journalism students obtained the spreadsheets of closings and layoffs going back to 1980. Each year’s listings were regrouped by city and the number of closings and layoffs and the number of workers affected was tallied. The team had to sometimes make judgments when working with the workforce information. There were several instances of businesses filing more than one closing in a year. Businesses are required to notify the state 60 days before closing and if the closing was delayed they had to re-notify, some businesses had multiple locations and listed separate closings and some listed each division as a separate closing. Working with those numbers and Census Bureau information the team learned: § Milwaukee has averaged 10 closings per year but that number is rising by two closings per year per decade. § Wisconsin has averaged 64 closings per year and that number is rising. § Three of Milwaukee’s four worst years occurred in the early half of this decade. § On average, Milwaukee accounts for 19 percent of Wisconsin’s closings but that number is gradually decreasing. § Milwaukee accounted for 46 percent of the closings of Wisconsin’s 12 major metropolitan areas but that number is also going down. § On average, Milwaukee and Wisconsin closings affected nearly the same number of workers per closing. § The layoff numbers mirror the closing numbers when Milwaukee is compared to Wisconsin. § Manufacturing jobs are decreasing but increases in other industries results in a net gain of Milwaukee jobs. § Sorting the number of workplaces by employee size indicates that there are more places to work but they are smaller in size. A plant is not a plant: The closings in Milwaukee and Wisconsin follow similar patterns but that is not to say there are not differences. Sammis White said that Milwaukee historically had a greater portion of manufacturing jobs compared to the rest of the state. White is the director of the Center for Workforce Development at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Manufacturing jobs typically pay more and have more symbiotic relationships with suppliers, support industries, accountants, transportation providers and banks. When that snowball effect is considered, losing manufacturing jobs just hurts more. There was a revolution in manufacturing in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, according to White, plants that took their domestic market for granted suddenly had competition. Manufacturing is still important to Milwaukee’s economy, according to White. But manufacturing used to represent nearly half of Milwaukee’s jobs and, as the Census Bureau data suggests, that number is shrinking and being replaced with service type jobs. When the going gets tough: Many of those plants were very old and very inefficient. And, according to White, ease of access became more important as businesses changed to the just-in-time production model where trucks are continuously dropping off supplies and picking up completed goods. That’s part of the reason Trade Tech, Inc. moved from Milwaukee to Hartford in 2007. “We needed space; we bought some huge cranes and literally built the building around them,” said Duane Brzozowski, the owner. There really are greener pastures in Hartford, or at least on the way there. Brzozowski was wooed out of Milwaukee by an attractive land offer in Hartford. And with the hour drive culminating on Constitution Ave., having just crossed Liberty Ave. and turning left onto Independence Ave., it would seem un-American not to relocate. His new building shares a landscaped industrial park with Quad Graphics and a laundry list of other businesses. The location cries “new and improved” in contrast to the chain-linked security fencing and crumbling buildings on broken-bottle strewn streets he left behind. But it wasn’t just a bigger, more efficient building he needed. “The real reason we moved is because it was difficult to find qualified people downtown,” he said. They were looking for machinists with a few years experience and said they would have to screen 19-20 applicants in Milwaukee to find one qualified worker. Now, he said, they have an unlimited supply. The need for qualified workers was the number one concern of the 177 manufacturers’ surveyed in 2006 by Milwaukee 7, a group concerned with economic development in the seven county southeastern Wisconsin area. It’s surprising that workforce issues were more of a concern than the much ballyhooed healthcare costs, taxes and business climate, but White said he knew of plants with 85 percent worker turnover rates. Labor representatives are not convinced. “I’m not aware of any turnover rates like that,” said Ernie Dex, director of the local United Steelworkers Union. Dex said few workers quit once they get in a plant with union representation. He dismissed talk of union wages having a negative impact in area manufacturing. Even in lieu of the recent downsizing, Dex sites Harley-Davidson as an example of union’s negotiating to keep manufacturing jobs in the area. Competing on wages is not the way to keep manufacturing jobs in Milwaukee, according to Dex. He said the trade laws have to be enforced and China has to be held to the same labor and environmental standards that U.S. companies adhere to. The elephant in the room: “The new story is that plants are going overseas to China and India,” according to O’Brien. Dex said China has an unlimited number of workers willing to work for cents per hour, and Brzozowski said Trade Tech had to reinvent itself after the leather industry was lost to China. Bob Lackie was the human resources manager and oversaw the closing of the Emerson Motor Company plant in Sturgeon Bay. He said that at the beginning of the ten year process moving Emerson out of Wisconsin, the assumption was the jobs would go to other states or Mexico, but by the time the plant closed in 2003 half of the jobs went to China. As Milwaukee goes so goes Wisconsin? As a percentage of statewide closings, Milwaukee averaged 28 percent through the 1980’s, 15 percent through the 1990’s and 13 percent since 2000. If there is a silver lining to the shrinking size of the businesses, the successive closings also affected fewer workers. White wasn’t sure if these numbers were good news for Milwaukee or bad news for the rest of the state. Lackie said Milwaukee has its own problems including crime and race issues but described a statewide liberal culture that makes Wisconsin unattractive to business. “Wisconsin is business friendly,” according to Lackie, “but other states are more business friendly.” He said plants have to perform better in Wisconsin just to stay even with plants in Arkansas or Tennessee. He said higher insurance and wages make Wisconsin expensive and said worker’s compensation insurance costs in Michigan are only a quarter of what they are in Wisconsin. There is a Wisconsin work ethic, according to Lackie, but like many of the 177 manufacturers surveyed, he sees it declining. He said that work ethic kept the Sturgeon Bay Emerson plant competitive against cheaper states, but when Mexico and China were thrown into the calculations, they couldn’t compete. Manufacturers are more upbeat these days, White said, as the undervalued dollar makes their goods more affordable overseas. He’s skeptical of Milwaukee returning to its prosperous manufacturing days. White says it goes back to the labor supply. There is evidence, he said, that as the average years of education in a community go up there is more entrepreneurialism and a more successful economy. The graduation rate for Milwaukee Public Schools hovers around 45 percent while 54 percent of Dane County residents have college degrees. Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:17:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17902&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17902&mname=Article By Rose Davis Frontpage Milwaukee News Editor rmdavis2@uwm.edu July 20, 2008 The Dark Knight Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Director: Christopher Nolan Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Morgan Freeman Run Time: 2 hours 32 minutes Rating: PG-13 As the lights go down and the newest addition to the Batman series begins, a chill runs through the audience. We are about to see a man in the last role he’s ever played, in which he so completely transforms into this sinister and twisted character that he is barely recognizable. The Joker (Health Ledger) sucks you in from the beginning and continues to surprise you throughout the entire film. Batman may have finally met his match. The Dark Knight, produced by Warner Bros. Pictures is not just another Batman movie. Writer and director Christopher Nolan, who also directed Batman Begins and Memento, does an amazing job of bringing the characters to life onscreen and keeps your heart racing throughout this action-packed thrill-ride of a movie. Health Ledger easily outshines the entire cast in his role as the Joker. Even Christian Bale, who made an excellent Batman in Batman Begins, was hard to relate to in the part of Bruce Wayne and unidentifiable as Batman. The film chills you to the bone and brings Gotham City to its darkest hour, and you’re definitely going to want to be there to see it. For years Batman (Christian Bale) has worked to keep the city of Gotham safe from the criminals and lunatics who wander the darkened streets. He is the hero we’ve grown up with and put our faith in. However, he knows he can’t be Batman forever, and when new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) comes to town, Batman believes that he may be the one to finally bring peace and justice to Gotham. When Dent manages to arrest one of the key members of the mob he is given the evidence he needs to take down the rest of the key players. Unfortunately, there is a new villain in town, and he has other plans. Batman and Dent join together to fight the Joker, who leads them in a sinister game of cat and mouse, bringing in a twist at the end that you never see coming. The plot is very dark and leaves you questioning the good of humanity. Although there is a lot of action and very few dull moments, the film did get a little long. Nolan could have easily gotten an entire second film out of this one; however he did manage to pull things together well at the end. Ledger was absolutely fantastic as the Joker. Never before have we seen him in this dark of a role, and it is as if he pulled all the darkness from his own life and used this character as an outlet. He definitely deserves no less than an Oscar nomination for this role, and his portrayal of the Joker will go down in super villain history. Both Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent) and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who replaced Katie Holmes in the role of Rachel Dawes, were fantastic in their roles. Eckhart, who we have seen in Thank You for Smoking, is picture perfect for the role of the determined D.A. who believes that justice will prevail in the end. There is a twist with his character in the end in which we get to see another side to Eckhart that he plays with such cold-heartedness that it will give you chills. Gyllenhaal seemed to be a much better fit in the role of Rachel and has great chemistry with both Bale and Eckhart. The special effects were done very well in the film. We see Batman jumping off buildings and ‘flying’ to safety, and there is a big car chase full of explosions, crashes and fire. Honestly, what more could an action fan ask for? Many of the scenes are shot with very little light, which increased the feeling of drama and mystery. Nolan did an excellent job of creating a haunting atmosphere, and his action scenes where very realistic. The Dark Knight met and then exceeded all of my expectations. It sucks you in from the beginning, and you better hold on tight because it will give you the thrill ride you’ve been waiting for. Ledger’s groundbreaking final performance as the Joker will go down in history, and I think it will be a long time before we see another villain played with such ferocity. Whether you’re a diehard Batman fan or not, I would recommend this film to anyone who can appreciate all that goes into to making such a great film. Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:32:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17901&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17901&mname=Article By Joe Ford Frontpage Milwaukee staff July 6, 2008 Lucinda Williams tried to soft peddle her subtle, bluesy twang to a receptive audience Thursday night, but it wasn't happening. A full volume hip-hop act on an adjacent stage wouldn't allow it. The noise from the Miller stage rattled Lucinda and annoyed the crowd. Complaints from both peppered the show. Lucinda, at one point, observed, "frankly starting to (expletive) me off," and wondered aloud why she was scheduled to play last when Acevedo, the band before her, played a loud, fast set and would have been a better fit for the late night noise level. The volume was cranked up in response, which didn't help the vocal audio, but it enhanced the guitar work, which was incredible to begin with. Her play list included some well worn Williams tunes and a few moldy covers along with personal work so new she had to read the lyrics from sheet music on a stand next to the microphone. It was so new it was unreleased and as yet not committed to memory. Good stuff, though, if you like your rock and roll with a message and a twang. Maybe next year she'll get a more sedate venue to showcase her talentmore effectively. Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:22:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17897&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17897&mname=Article By Rose Davis Frontpage Milwaukee News Editor June 23, 2008 Free food, hundreds of dollars in expenses, cell phones, and other offerings. That's what a north side businessman testified was the price of doing business in the district of former Alderman Michael McGee Jr. McGee is currently on trial fighting those charges of extortion, bribery and failing to file required forms for financial transactions, the latest in a string of politicians in Wisconsin accused of using their power for personal gain.. The government’s star witness Adel “Jack” Kheirieh, owner of a small business in the 6th district while McGee was alderman, took the stand last week in day four of former alderman McGee’s trial. U.S. attorney Joseph Wall played for the court numerous recorded conversations between McGee and various other small business owners in the 6th district which were recorded by Kheirieh, who was wearing a wire while serving as an FBI informer. Among this was evidence that McGee was allegedly charging store owners fees ranging from $200 to $2,000 for his support of renewing their liquor license when the city threatened to take it away. There were also many recordings in which McGee asked Kheirieh for money, which he was given, along with a cell phone and food free of charge. The recordings also brought to light some conversations McGee had regarding vote-buying, however after an objection from McGee’s attorney Calvin Malone, Judge Charles Clevert told jury members to disregard the testimony as McGee is not being tried for this violation of law until his state trial. Kheirieh discussed how he became involved with the FBI, through a conversation with former alderman George Butler, and why he finally felt he needed to report McGee’s wrongdoings. “We sell bubble gum and penny candy to make a buck and they (referring to the Aldermen) come and take it all,” said Kheirieh. Kheirieh estimates that McGee was costing him as much as $30,000 in 2006 and 2007, an amount which was on an upward climb since McGee was elected in 2004. According to Kheirieh’s testimony, he was paying for numerous cell phones for McGee, supplying him and his friends with free food and providing him with hundreds of dollars for his other expenses. When asked if McGee would give a reason for his need for cash, Kheirieh replied, “Yes, sometimes money for lawyer, sometimes money to move, so many reasons sometimes I forget what reason for what occasion.” When asked why he continued to give the former alderman money, Kheirieh claims that he wanted to maintain a good relationship with him in order to keep his liquor license. “It’s common knowledge that if the alderman doesn’t support [a store’s] liquor license the storeowner will not get approval [when up for renewal],” said Kheirieh. For the small business owners in Milwaukee’s 6th aldermanic district, losing your liquor license can be detrimental to their store’s success. Labeled as a “key person” because of this relationship with McGee, Kheirieh’s testimony is key to the state's case. As day four of the trial came to an end, Attorney Malone was given the chance to cross-examine the witness. He reiterated when, where and whom Kheirieh had recorded when wearing his wire. Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:52:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17895&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17895&mname=Article By Rebecca Kontowicz of the Frontpage Milwaukee staff June 15, 2008 Only 1 percent of completed criminal cases in Wisconsin’s Circuit Court system from the last three years went to trial while a quarter of the nearly half a million cases were dismissed and close to three-fourths were disposed through plea agreements before trial, a Frontpage Milwaukee investigation has found. In fact, nine counties each took less than 1 percent of their criminal cases to trial, even though they had a combined 23, 958 cases over the three year period. Adams County, in particular, disposed of 2,345 criminal cases from 2005 to 2007 and had only two of those cases go to trial. Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest county, takes more cases to trial than many of the counties and took the most to trial out of the top 10 counties with the largest case loads. Of the state’s 72 counties, Crawford took the most cases to trial at 5 percent. The county’s circuit court judge will not accept deals before trial if a sentence is recommended by the state, according to the district attorney’s office. This is a unique policy, which contributes in part to the number of cases that go to trial. On the other hand, one county – Shawano – settled more than 90 percent of its cases by cutting plea agreements with defendants, the highest in the state. On the other end of the spectrum was Pepin County, where only a little more than half of all defendants ended up settling before trial. As for Milwaukee, it fared near the bottom. The county is far less likely to make deals with defendants before trial. It did, however, dismiss far more of its cases than average and came close to Iron County which tossed almost half of its criminal cases. Shawano County stood out once again, tossing only 6 percent of its cases – the least in the state. Why does it matter? In today’s society, with regular media coverage of high profile trials like that of O.J. Simpson or, locally, Mark Jensen and Michael McGee Jr., one wonders what the average perception of the court system might be. Frontpage Milwaukee randomly questioned a few University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee students on the matter to gauge those perceptions. Twenty-five-year-old Matthew Schell took a wild guess that 30 percent of the state’s criminal cases go to trial. Sophomore Heather Hansvn was a tad closer. “I think it’s a low amount,” Hansvn said, guesstimating that 15 percent of the state’s criminal cases go to trial. Due to law and criminal justice classes Hasvn has taken in the past, she said she was familiar with plea bargaining and stated that most cases usually don’t make it to trial. She’s right, but once given the statewide statistics, both students were surprised. In fact, Hasvn stated she was shocked. While an exact cost per case can not be calculated, district attorneys and public defenders across the state agree that time is saved if a case is resolved before trial. Attorney and judicial fees, state time and the cost of jurors all fit into the equation. Of course, not going to trial can have a downside – for defendants whose overworked lawyers may pressure them to plead cases they might be able to win and for victims who might want to see justice determined by more than money and caseload issues. Milwaukee’s “hand of justice” lies within the Milwaukee County Courthouse, adorned and supported by Corinthian colonnades in the heart of downtown Milwaukee. Many do not truly grasp how cases are handled within. The Frontpage Milwaukee team spent four months pouring through statewide, county and district yearend court reports along with over 850 dismissed cases in Milwaukee County to gather this data. The full dismissed case loads from July 2005 to July 2007 of Judge Daniel Lee Konkol, Judge Martin Joseph Donald and Judge William W. Brash, III were randomly chosen and examined. During the three year period, Donald was assigned to the felony drug division while both Konkol and Brash were assigned to felony homicide. A spot check of several Milwaukee judges’ cases found that it is not only minor offenses being tossed but gun, weapon and drug charges also went out the door. And while cases are dismissed or settled for many reasons before trial, the team of student journalists did find a pattern in older cases where files were simply being lost, although prosecutors said it was unlikely to lead to dismissal outright. For example, on December 12, 1989, Lisa Urich was arrested for having marijuana. The 22-year-old was charged with possession of a controlled substance. Urich was to appear in court before Judge Charles B. Schudson but failed to ever show up. A $500 bench warrant was issued, however, she did not reappear in court until 2004 and according to court records, the original court file was not available at that time. The Milwaukee County investigation found: A large number of gun cases involving felons with firearms and offenders who had been charged with carrying a concealed weapon were dismissed.A large number of drug dealing cases were dismissed.A large number of cases where defendants had failed to register as sex offenders were dismissed. Reasons for dismissal ranged from lack of proof, lack of evidence, lack of probable cause and missing witnesses to plea agreements, compliance (i.e. registering as a sex offender), federal indictment, judicial economy and even death. The most common reason for dismissal was plea bargaining. A spot check of more than 200 dismissed cases from the 1980s and 1990s produced a noticeable pattern in lost court files. Milwaukee’s Numbers Onlookers sporadically spread themselves among seven, uncomfortable wooden benches that fill a gallery in Judge William Brash’s courtroom. Friends and family members of offenders observe each proceeding, separated from the judge, his secretary, two officers, the prosecution and defense by a wall consisting of mainly glass window and wooden frame. Brash presides over a reconfinement hearing, sitting comfortably in a large, leather chair behind a grand wooden desk. To his left, a jurors’ booth can be found mostly empty, with a defense attorney or two filling a few seats. A weathered American flag sits to the side. On Thursday, April 24 a young man in his early 20s, handcuffed and wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit is escorted into the courtroom. His name is Jimale Laws and his lawyer is young, looking barely a day over 25. The prosecution appears experienced, older and wiser. His argument is quick, requesting that Laws be sent back to jail to finish his five year term behind bars for robbery, use of force. The defense pleads a lengthy, pathos ridden case and uses the defendant’s deeply troubled past as the driving force in an argument for continued extended supervision. “I take full responsibility for my actions,” claimed the defendant rather confidently. Brash reviews his documents and states that there are rules and laws to follow and that this repeat offender will deal with the consequences of not abiding by them. After about 20 minutes of argument and explanation, the defendant is sentenced to two years in prison. There’s a chance Laws will regain extended supervision in his fifth year. When Laws was originally convicted and pled guilty to forceful robbery, his case became similar to the other 15,913 felony cases in Milwaukee County that were settled through agreements before trial from 2005 to 2007. Sixty-three percent of Milwaukee County Circuit Court’s 85,473 disposed criminal cases were settled through stipulation and plea bargaining over the three year period, while 35 percent were dismissed and almost 2 percent went to court or jury trial. Disposed Dismissed Stip/Pled Trial 85,473 29,822 53,441 1,511 Milwaukee Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern was not surprised at all by the numbers. He actually predicted that over 95 percent of the county’s cases are settled before trial. Lovern pointed out that there are thousands of criminal cases that move through the circuit court system each year and it "logistically wouldn't be possible" for all of them to go to trial. He does not see a problem with settling a case before trial if the goals of a prosecutor are resolved through something like a plea agreement. However, "prosecutors should never resolve a case simply to avoid going to trial," Lovern did add. Thomas Reed, who leads the Milwaukee office for state public defenders, believes that in an ideal criminal justice system the trial rate should be low. “Maybe it’s a really great system that’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” Reed said. He also stated that in many cases the prosecution could be weak resulting in a large number of cases being dismissed. On the other side, he said it could be that the prosecution is strong and the defense is wary, often resulting in fewer cases going to trial. As for the noted pattern in dismissed weapon cases in Milwaukee County, Lovern stated that there are a fair number of charges issued each year and like all other kinds of cases some will get dismissed for one reason or another. However, he did note that defendants will agree to programs like Project Safe Neighborhood and their case will be dismissed. At other times, the case will go to federal trial so the original state case will be dismissed. About 200 of the more than 700 dismissed cases examined by the student journalists were gun cases, including felon possession of firearm and concealed carry charges. Mike Tobin, director of the trial division for Wisconsin's state public defenders, was slightly surprised by the numbers. "I wouldn't expect a lot of those to be outright dismissed," said Tobin who stated the only reason he would think a notable amount of weapons cases are dismissed is if there are multiple charges against a defendant or if the prosecution’s evidence was weak. He does feel that a judge’s opinion on a right to bear arms can come into question in a case that deals with self defense. In cases where sex offenders fail to register, Lovern said that around two or three years ago it was common practice to charge someone and then toss the case once the defendant complied. "We've gotten away from that," Lovern added. Around 15 percent of the reviewed dismissed cases dealt with sex charges and 53 of those were for failing to register as a sex offender. The majority of these were tossed in 2007. Tobin said that while the practice Lovern described is still common in some counties, other sex offender cases may be dropped if an offender is homeless or doesn’t have an address to register. About 10 percent of the dismissed cases the Frontpage Milwaukee team reviewed were drug related. Tobin said that at times a defendant will go get treatment and as a result there will be a post charge dismissal. As for lost court files in older cases causing dismissal -- it seems to be rare and some deny it causes any real problem. Only 13 of over 200 cases reviewed from the 1980s and 1990s had missing court files. "I haven't seen it too often," Lovern said. He said a new court file could be built with a criminal complaint. Tobin also stated that it was very unusual. Urich appeared in court for her 1989 conviction only after being charged once again in 2003, this time for failing to have her child attend school. A year later, she crossed paths with the law again for retail theft. The older possession case was dismissed, but was it due to the missing court file? “That would not be a reason for a case to be dismissed,” said Dennis Murphy, the Milwaukee County assistant district attorney who had prosecuted Urich. Due to the age of the case, Murphy could not recall exactly why the case was dismissed but stated that court files can be recreated with information from the clerk’s office. He believes that it’s likely that since the case was so old, witnesses and evidence were no longer available. Urich’s attorney at the time, William Marquis, can not remember the details of the case either but said a lost court file is not common. "I rarely have come across a case where there wasn't a court file," Marquis added. Milwaukee County Chief Deputy Clerk of Circuit Court James Smith said that court files can be lost if someone checks them out and doesn’t return them or if they get misfiled. Smith explained that there are millions of different files stored in three different locations. However, losing a file is not something that occurs regularly. "It doesn't happen very often at all, fortunately," Smith said. "We can recreate files by getting copies of documents the different parties might have." Dismissed Cases Of Wisconsin’s 486,047 disposed criminal cases from 2005 to 2007, almost 120,000 were dismissed and 21 percent were felony cases. Similarly, 21 percent of all disposed felony cases were dismissed statewide. Iron County Circuit Court had the highest percentage of dismissed cases throughout the state during the three year period at 42 percent. However, the county disposed of only 672 cases. Shawano had the least, dismissing just six percent of its 4,866 criminal cases. "That's pretty standard. I'm not too worried about it," said Iron County District Attorney Martin Lipske. Lipske said that most of the cases he deals with are in regards to bad checks. The county will charge $50 for a bounced check. Once a defendant has paid, the case is tossed. Shawano County District Attorney Gregory Parker would not comment on the issue. According to the President of Wisconsin’s District Attorney Association Timothy Baxter, when a case is dismissed, the public perception is that it can't be proven. However, he stated that could not be farther from the truth. "We [prosecutors] can't bring the charges if we can't prove it," Baxter said. The Crawford County district attorney said that prosecutors will sometimes use what are called "alternative dispute resolutions," through which cases end up being tossed. For example, if a first time offender is arrested for domestic abuse and disorderly conduct, a district attorney might chose to “divert” their case. In this scenario, the state makes it clear that they will dismiss the case under the condition that the defendant seeks recommended treatment such as domestic abuse assessment and therapy. The case will stay open until they complete treatment in order to "hold a charge over a guy’s [offender’s] head to get help." Baxter said a lot of counties will use this tactic with first time drug possession charges. He explained that with young people a drug conviction can hurt an offender’s chance at things like student loans. "Rather than ruin an 18-year-olds life they'll be put on diversion," Baxter said. Trials As noted earlier, Adams County, which disposed 2,345 criminal cases from 2005 to 2007, had only two of its criminal cases go to trial. Chippewa, Douglas, Iowa, Washburn, Jackson, Green Lake, Lafayette and Sawyer County were like Adams in that less than 1 percent of their cases went to trial. Mark D. Thibodeau, Adams County district attorney, does not see a problem with the numbers and feels it indicates that experienced prosecutors are charging and prosecuting good cases against responsible defendants. He also attributes the numbers to a cooperative and reasonable defense bar. “No trial in most cases is a win-win for all, as long as justice is served,” said Thibodeau in a written statement to Frontpage Milwaukee. “For the prosecutor it means less preparation of valuable time and for all of the above it means less anxiety, inconvenience and of course valuable time and expense. It goes without saying a jury trial can be an expensive cost to taxpayers as well. I cannot think of a negative of having no trial (again) as long as the punishment or sentence fits the crime and criminal. Judges can assure that is the case at sentencing.” Thibodeau also cited a recent legislative audit, calling for more than 130 additional prosecutors throughout the state. He believes the system is broken and that “experienced, knowledgeable and dedicated people” are leaving the system to low pay and overload. The district attorney said the Adams County statistics confirm that “the volume is overwhelming for a one person office, nights and weekends no longer provide enough hours in the day, most defendants plead because they are guilty and appropriately charged, few cases are dismissed because justice is done for victims and the community and few cases need to be tried due to experience and a cooperative and reasonable defense bar.” Of the state’s 72 counties, Crawford had the highest amount of its criminal cases go to trial at 5 percent. The county disposed of just 625 cases over the three year period. Rose Oliveto, a Crawford County public defender, was not surprised by the high percentage, when compared to the rest of the state. She told Frontpage Milwaukee that Crawford County District Attorney Timothy Baxter does not make plea bargain recommendations for a defendant. “The cost is less to taxpayers if there’s no trial,” Oliveto said. When asked about the lack of recommendations, Baxter explained that Judge Michael T. Kirchman has a policy that he will not accept a plea agreement if the sentence is recommended by the state. According to Baxter, Kirchman feels that if the state gives a sentence recommendation that a defendant perceives as good or soft, they might plead guilty to a crime even if it is one they did not commit in order save time and avoid looking bad to the public. This can lead to more trials because, as a result, defendants and their attorneys have to “go in blind,” not knowing what the sentence might be. Baxter said that most of the attorneys in Crawford County have been around for so long that they trust the prosecutor won’t make an outrageous recommendation and convince their clients to do so as well. However, some defendants don’t and ask for a trial. The policy is “well and sound,” according to Baxter, who added it would never work in a county like Milwaukee due to its large case load. While Oliveto feels the policy makes a significant impact on the percentage of cases that go to trial in the county, Baxter feels it does only contributes here and there. “Maybe it’s just the fact that I don’t agree to everything a defense attorney proposes,” Baxter said when asked what reason he’d give for Crawford’s numbers. Baxter also commented on the low number of cases going to trial statewide. He said that due to the sheer number of criminal cases filed, very few go to trial and the fact that 1 percent (5,572) of criminal cases statewide are tried is "a pretty large number in and of itself." "Prosecutors charge out what you feel is appropriate," said Baxter. The president of the Wisconsin District Attorney Association added that some district attorneys “over charge” which makes it appear as if cases are getting “plea bargained away.” The Crawford district attorney explained that prosecutors will charge a defendant with a felony knowing that down the line, through plea bargaining, it will end up as a misdemeanor. Baxter feels this can waste time and does not make a habit of doing so. Plea Agreements Shawano County settled 91 percent of its criminal cases through stipulation and plea bargaining and was the county to do so the most. Pepin County had the least with 56 percent of 706 disposed cases settled that way. “This wouldn’t necessarily surprise me because we have a much lower case load,” said Pepin County District Attorney Jon Seifert in response to the data. “Pepin County is a little county . . . it’s the smallest county geographically and the second or third smallest county by population.” Pepin deals with hundreds of cases each year compared to larger counties like Milwaukee which handles thousands. Seifert considers this an advantage and said it gives him the time and recourses to analyze each case thoroughly and decide exactly how he would like to proceed. “The light case load allows me to look at each case individually,” Seifert said. Shawano County District Attorney Gregory Parker would not respond on the matter. However, Tobin shared what he believes can contribute to the number of plea deals in counties throughout the state. "It's difficult to compare one county to another," Tobin said, adding that it's almost impossible given local factors such as changes in law enforcement practice. However, one thing in particular that can influence the percentage of cases resolved through plea bargaining or those that are dismissed is determined by the way through which charges are issued by the prosecution, according to Tobin. District attorneys can file many charges against one offender under one case while those same charges could be issued as multiple cases. A district attorney may also be in the habit of charging more than they truly desire to get convictions or in order to plea bargain down to a desired result, as Baxter similarly explained. Tobin used a domestic abuse incident as an example to help clarify. A district attorney from county X might file one case with one charge for battery. A district attorney from county Y, prosecuting the same domestic abuse incident, might file one case with two charges -- one for felony false imprisonment and one for battery. Meanwhile, a district attorney from County Z could file one case with one charge for felony imprisonment and a second case for the battery charge. For explanation purposes, hypothetically speaking, each county district attorney will have the same goal of convicting the defendant with battery. As you can see, county X will either settle or go to trial. The county Y district attorney hopes through plea bargaining that the felony false imprisonment charge will be dismissed in order for the defendant to settle for the battery charge. However, the case overall would be considered either dismissed or settled through stipulation and plea bargaining. The county Z district attorney hopes for the same outcome as county Y, however, the felony imprisonment case will be considered dismissed while the case which holds the battery charged would be considered settled through stipulation and plea bargaining. As one can see, this will affect the percentage of cases that may be settled through stipulation and plea bargaining or are dismissed. Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:47:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17890&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17890&mname=Article By Rose Davis Frontpage Milwaukee News Editor rmdavis2@uwm.edu June 1, 2008 A large crowd of older adults and a small number 16-25-years olds gathered to hear Sen. John McCain speak at Greendale Martin Luther High School last Thursday for what he called a “Town Hall Meeting,” in order to “take us back to colonial America” and discuss his plans for the future presidency. There were so many people in attendance that after waiting in line for 20 minutes and passing through a metal detector I was ushered into the cafeteria, which was set up as the overflow room with several dozen plastic chairs positioned around two small TV screens. There was a general tension among those who had not arrived more than an hour early in order to make it into the gymnasium where McCain’s stage was set. “We came all the way down here and don’t even get to see him? What’s the point?” These were the questions being uttered by those around me, and as we watched the camera pan the gymnasium, showing several sets of closed bleachers, I began to ask myself the same thing. Congressman Paul Ryan introduced McCain, saying that there are two kinds of people in politics, “be-ers” and “do-ers,” and asked the crowd, “Do we want a ‘be-er’ or a ‘do-er’?” Sen. McCain wandered in from the side of the room as the crowd shouted “do-er” in support of the man who had just moseyed onto the stage. Sen. McCain graciously accepted his applause and began to discuss his stance on the big issues: the war in Iraq, climate change and our dependence on foreign oil. It was clear that McCain believes that Sen. Barack Obama will be his opponent in the presidential race of 2008 as he made sure to point out where Obama was in contradiction with his own beliefs. He pointed out their disagreement on the Farm Bill, the gas-tax holiday and Obama’s timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. McCain stands firmly by the statement, “We are winning in Iraq,” and told the people that he will not bring the troops home without honor, victory and a stable Middle East. The crowd rose in a standing ovation as McCain pumped his fist and shouted, “My friends, I will never surrender in Iraq.” When talking about climate change, McCain said it’s a real problem and that we must look into other options, such as solar and wind. “America is the greatest and most innovative country in the world,” he said, we are capable of making a change. After approximately a 30 minute speech McCain asked for questions from the audience. These began with a question for a young man concerning medical expenses and reform. McCain promised that he would make healthcare affordable and give low-income families a $5000 tax credit towards their health expenses. Another audience member came forward with a question that has been a serious challenge for politicians: what are you going to do about illegal aliens and illegal immigration? McCain said he will secure our borders and start temporary worker programs. He said that although we should be humane and compassionate, this is a national security issue. One woman asked how McCain plans to lower our national debt and boost the economy while still staying in the war, a war which he has recently said he would stay in until 2013. In response, the senator reiterated that Obama’s plan for bringing the troops home earlier “would have created greater sacrifice,” and that removing the troops earlier would actually cost us more than keeping them there for another five years. However, he did nothing to address the actual question the woman asked, and even after she asked more directly, “What are you going to do about the economy?” McCain seemed to think it was more important to point out the shortcomings of Sen. Obama rather than give a definite answer. Once the question and answer session came to an end in the gymnasium McCain made his way across the hall into the overflow room. The room around me exploded with cheers and applause as the republican presidential hopeful walked in. The woman next to me, who had brought her 18-year-old niece to see McCain, was given the opportunity to ask him a question. She told him that her niece was fiscally republican and socially liberal, “what can you tell her to convince her that you deserve her vote?” she asked. McCain responded with a good humored smile, saying that he could relate to this younger generation. “That’s why I did Saturday Night Live and went on the Daily Show,” he said, to appeal to the younger crowd and to show that he is up on the times. After answering a few other questions and shaking some hands McCain waved and smiled as he was escorted from the overflow room and out of the building. “I’m glad we stayed,” said the woman next to me, “It was worth it just to see him.” Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:43:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17889&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17889&mname=Article By Rose Davis Frontpage Milwaukee News Editor rmdavis2@uwm.edu May 29, 2008 Now that school is out for Milwaukee college students many are left wondering what to do with their free time. Fortunately this city is jam-packed with festivals, concerts and various other events that will make your friends jealous that they went home for the summer. RiverSplash: May 30-June1. This festival officially begins the summer season in Milwaukee. It is located on the Milwaukee River, from Old World 3rd St. to Water St. and features music from over 40 local, regional and national bands, as well as food from 30 different Milwaukee restaurants. Jazz in the Park: Beginning June 5 and continuing every Thursday night from 6-9 p.m. throughout the summer in Cathedral Square Park. Bring a blanket and a bottle of wine and unwind while listening to some great jazz music by local, regional and national artists. Locust St. Fest: June 8. Located on Locust Street between Humboldt Blvd. and Holton St. this fest features more than 60 arts and crafts booths, five entertainment stages and kicks off with a 1.8-mile Beer Run/Walk. Polish Fest: June 20-22 at the Henry Maier Festival Park, better known as the Summerfest grounds. Whether you have a Polish heritage or not, come and enjoy the non-stop polka stage, get a taste of traditional Polish foods and pick up some Polish souvenirs. Lakefront Festival of the Arts: June 20-22 at the Milwaukee Art Museum grounds along Lake Michigan. Includes works from approximately 170 artists, a college student art show, children’s art activities, live music and more. Brady Street Fest: June 26 on Brady St. from Van Buren St. to Marshall. This fest features venders selling locally grown Wisconsin food, award-winning cheese makers, several live bands and a fashion show with local stores. Summerfest: June 28-July 8 at the Henry Maier Festival Park. Probably the best known summer festival in Milwaukee, Summerfest features headliners such as Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Rascal Flatts, John Mayer and Stone Temple Pilots, along with an assortment of food venders. Bastille Days: July 10-13 in downtown Milwaukee, centered around Cathedral Square Park. Kicked off with the “Storming of the Bastille,” a 5k fun run, this festival features street performers, interactive and musical entertainment, a 43-foot Eiffel Tower and plenty of authentic French cuisine. Festa Italiana: July 17-20 at the Henry Maier Festival Park. With nightly fireworks, 10 stages of entertainment, a rare bronze cast of Michelangelo’s Pieta and venders from Milwaukee’s fantastic Italian restaurants this fest will bring out the Italian in anyone. German Fest: July 24-27 at the Henry Maier Festival Park. Enjoy traditional German food, music and dance at this festival where 20,000 brats and 10,000 pounds of sauerkraut are devoured each year by visitors from around the country. African World Fest: August 1-3 at the Henry Maier Festival Park. At this annual celebration of African heritage and culture you can see authentic artwork, jewelry and clothing, try some African cuisine and enjoy a variety of live entertainment. Irish Fest: August 14-17 at the Henry Maier Festival Park. Everyone knows the Irish love to celebrate so come participate in Ceili (KAY-lee) dancing, visit the cultural village and relax while listening to some traditional Irish music. Mexican Fiesta: August 22-24 at the Henry Maier Festival Park. Special guest artist Jacobo Dominguez will be displaying his creative and vibrant artwork. At the Tequila Expo guests can learn the culture and history of the drink that made Mexico famous. Of course there will be plenty of delicious Mexican cuisine and spicy Latin music. Indian Summer: September 5-7 at the Henry Maier Festival Park. View art by American Indians from across the United States and enjoy cultural foods such as buffalo, wild rice, corn soup and fry bread. Thu, 29 May 2008 11:10:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17885&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17885&mname=Article By: Andrew Olejnik May 11, 2008 Imagine you are a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee visiting the campus bookstore. While walking through the narrow rows made-up of metal shelves that are stacked with various textbooks, you notice some large textbooks that are shrink-wrapped with a few other items. A closer look reveals the plastic covered package is for UWM’s Anatomy and Physiology course (Bio 202). The bundle includes a textbook, lab manual, CD-ROM and it costs $293.90. “Its something a nursing major expects,” said UWM nursing student Jennifer Zurawski. “Everyone knows about the Anatomy and Physiology bundle. It costs almost $300 and you have to have it.” Nationally, college textbook prices rose 186 percent from 1986 to 2004, according to researchers from a coalition of Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) for the Make Textbooks Affordable Campaign. “The government responded in 2005 to the cost of textbooks,” said Nicole Allen, coordinator of the Make Textbooks Affordable Campaign. She added that the federal government appointed the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance to study the textbook market in the United States. The committee concluded that almost half of textbooks only come bundled, and that just two-thirds of professors use the supplemental materials packed with textbooks. A team of student journalists conducted a spot check outside of several classrooms to determine if students are forced to buy the bundles. Students, at random, were asked if professors required them to use the materials inside their bundles. The team also asked the students if they independently used the bundled materials The Spot Check Found: • The majority of UWM professors do use supplemental materials in their course bundles. • Courses such as Biology, Chemistry and Business integrate its assignments with the bundled extras. • Anatomy and Physiology (Bio 202) students said the CD-ROM inside its bundle could not always be accessed on university computers. • The UWM Bookstore usually does not offer students the option to purchase the materials inside course bundles separately. • There are 10 items priced over $200 at the UWM Bookstore. The most expensive bundle is the Elsevier Level 3B Evolve bundle for Nursing 327 students, which costs $503.40. Textbook prices have sharply increased because of several reasons. Publishers decide the price of the textbook, and can raise it without any influence by policy makers. Until 2005, there has been little government intervention and regulation in the market. Students purchase their textbooks at the start of every semester and have no choice in opting for other textbooks, except for what the professor selects. Another contributing factor to rising prices is that many publishers frequently produce new editions. The new additions often only feature different illustrations, photographs or captions. The frequent production of new editions “sabotages” the used textbook market, according to the Make Textbooks Affordable Campaign. Many publishers also do not give students the option to purchase their textbooks separate from bundles. In many cases, the publisher requires the bookstore to sell books bundled with additional course materials. “We recognize that the bookstores don’t drive up the costs. The publishers do,” said Allen. “Many states have special legislation in place that requires publishers to sell the items separately.” Wisconsin, along with New Mexico and Nevada, has no legislation that regulates the textbook market. However, the UW System’s Board of Regents agreed during its Dec. 6, 2007, session to continue exploring options to maintain affordable textbook prices. The Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group is pushing for legislation that would require publishers to disclose information, such as the price of textbooks. The UWM Bookstore received nearly 400 textbook bundles this past fall in two ways, said campus bookstore manager Marc Sanders, a specialist in textbook operations at the UWM Bookstore. “Either the professor requests bundles from the publisher or the publisher automatically sends them to us,” said Sanders. “These materials are deemed necessary by either the UWM faculty or the companies that produce the books.” The Regents are currently investigating claims made by the Make Textbooks Affordable Campaign. On average, the campaign found bundled textbooks cost 10 percent more than their unbundled versions. Bundles are often stuffed with different versions of the same textbook made by a particular publisher. Sometimes the bundled version has no resale value because the textbook was part of the package, the Make Textbooks Affordable Campaign found. “In many cases the publisher convinces UWM professors that all the books bundled together are cheaper,” said Sanders. “This often influences the professor to move forward with their textbook orders requesting bundles.” Sanders said that the UWM Bookstore would normally buy back textbooks inside a bundle. However, the bookstore cannot buy back items the professor isn’t planning on using in the future. Of the 3,000 different titles of textbooks at the UWM Bookstore, nearly 400 come bundled. Few packages are available to students separately. However, in some cases students do have an option whether or not to buy a supplemental item such as a CD-ROM. For example, the Allyn & Bacon publishers have made their Psychology 101 textbook by Kosslyn and Rosenberg available with or without a MyPsychLab CD-ROM. The book that comes with the CD-ROM shrink-wrapped to it is priced differently than the book that does not come with it. The reason behind the different option is that several UWM professors who teach the Psychology class do not require students to use the CD-ROM. However, it is necessary for students taking the hybrid online version of the course. In the spot check, some UW-Milwaukee Psychology 101 students said they would still spend extra money on the MyPsychLab CD-ROM. The students that said the CD-ROM would be a good supplement to prepare for an exam. “The difference isn’t that much in cost,” said UWM student Eddie Danecki. “I would rather spend the extra six bucks and get a CD-ROM I can study from for exams. Sometimes textbooks just get boring; the CD would be a great reference.” The Make Textbooks Affordable Campaign is pushing Wisconsin policy makers to pass legislation that would allow students to purchase items separate from the bundle the publishers design. This will help students save money instead of buying unnecessary bundled course materials their professors aren’t requiring. Sun, 11 May 2008 22:13:00 CST http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17884&mname=Article http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/Viewer.aspx?iid=17884&mname=Article