Sausage Attacked at Miller Park
An Italian Sausage is recovering today after being attacked with a baseball bat by Randall Simon, a Pittsburgh Pirate first baseman, at Miller Park Wednesday evening.
Miller Park, the home of the Milwaukee Brewers, has the traditional sausage race every game between the sixth and seventh innings. However, Wednesday’s race went terribly wrong when Randall Simon, the first baseman, hit the Italian Sausage from behind, which also caused the Hot Dog to fall. The Polish Sausage stayed behind to help while
Bratwurst went on to win. ESPN.com reports the police are still investigating to see if the Bratwurst had any role in encouraging the attack by Simon.
Simon claims he did not mean to hurt the woman in the Italian Sausage costume, only that he was trying to give her some encouragement to cross the finish line. He was led from the stadium in handcuffs after the game and fined $432. Authorities are still deciding if they want to press charges or not.
Neither the Italian Sausage or Hot Dog were hurt, both just suffered scraped knees that were cared for after they finished the race.
Regents approve tuition hikes
The UW Board of Regents approved hikes today to raise tuition for UW-Madison and Milwaukee students by $350 per semester and by $250 for all other UW-system schools.
This increase in dollar amount applies to both in-state and out-of-state tuition as per a proposal given to the Regents earlier this week.
Within the new plan, in-state tuition would increase $700 a year at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee and $500 at all other UW schools — an increase of about 18 percent. Out of state tuition would go up the same dollar amounts — an increase of only 3.9 percent at UW-Madison.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel many regents feel UW is already out-pricing many non-residents from coming to school here, costing the system money. The system estimates that in 2002-03 360 students were lost because of the high tuition prices, a loss of $4.8 million for UW. Current out-of-state tuition is $17,854 per year while in state is $3,900 a year at Madison and $2,700 at the UW Colleges.
“It appears that we may have priced ourselves out of the market,” said Toby Marcovich, regent president, to the Journal Sentinel. He said most of the regents appear to agree with him.
UW is facing a $250 million cut from the proposed state budget, which is awaiting signature from Gov. Doyle. Tuition increases are supposed to help cover $150 million of the cut from the state budget.
The Regents also decided today that students will pay an average of $145 more to live in residence halls and $54 more for meal plans.
UW tennis players charged for selling drugs
Police charged a former UW men’s tennis team captain Monday for allegedly selling marijuana from his State Street apartment.
Blake Baratz, 23, is the second player from the tennis team to be charged for selling marijuana out of his apartment. Ward Bortz, 19, and Baratz’ doubles partner last season, was charged in early June. Bortz claims Baratz was his source for the marijuana, but Baratz denies ever selling Bortz the drugs.
The Capital Times reported that according to a criminal complaint, Madison police officers went to the apartment at 311 State St. on June 9 after getting a tip that marijuana was being sold by the pound at the apartment. By that time, the complaint states, Baratz had moved out of the apartment.
Doyle announces budget vetoes
This week Gov. Doyle announced he would trim $100 million in the state budget by the time he completes his vetoes. Doyle’s planned budget vetoes that have been thus far announced, primarily restore funding to certain programs, including 4-year-old kindergarten cuts and cuts to the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program.
Doyle’s veto to the shared revenue, restructures how the cuts are calculated and removes the Republican shared revenue formulas, thus giving Milwaukee a loss of only $9.7 million in shared revenue rather than $23.9 million under the GOP plan. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the change would help preserve emergency police, fire and health services.
Moreover, Doyle promised that with his vetoes, no community would lose more than 15 percent of the shared revenue they are getting this year.
On Monday the Governor announced he would restore cuts made by Republicans to the 4-year-kindergarten program and to the SAGE program which helps encourage smaller class sizes. Republicans contend their budget did not cut the programs but merely gave local governments more flexibility in deciding how to spend their money. They also worry that restoring funds to the 4-year-old kindergarten will disadvantage districts that don’t have the program from getting as much funding.
Eight Dave Matthews Enthusiasts Injured by Lightning
Lighting on Sunday afternoon before the Dave Matthews Band concert at Alpine Valley Music Theatre injured eight concertgoers. The lightning struck around 3:30 p.m. just as Dave Mathews Band enthusiasts arrived for pre-concert entertainment.
Five of the eight injured were taken to a local hospital for thorough examination. One of the men injured needed more extensive treatment and was airlifted by Flight for Life to Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Wauwatosa. His current status is unknown.
FORE!play
A Caledonia strip club has been holding adults-only entertainment events on the private South Hills golf course. WITI-TV of Milwaukee has released news of an undercover investigation that they have conducted over the past two summers in which the nightly hijinks were videotaped. The videotape captured images of golfers fondling naked women and other partially dressed dancers.
UW faces problem of aging faculty
The UW-Sytem is facing a graying of its faculty in the next five to six years that will likely result in the retirement of 2,384 faculty members, or 40 percent of those who taught classes in 1997-98.
This is a problem for System as it tries to determine how to pay for these faculty members’ replacements or whether to replace them at all. Already facing a tight state budget and increasing deficits, many UW schools have been hiring academic staff rather than professors because of the lower salaries and because academic staff are not eligible for tenure. According to the Wisconsin State Journal, in 1997-98, there were 5,416 faculty members throughout the System, compared to 1,406 academic staff; in fall 2002, there were 4,869 faculty members — a 10 percent decline — and 2,311 academic staff, or 64 percent more.
“One of the results of the higher rate of retirements is that a higher proportion of our teaching is now done by academic staff and not faculty, because academic staff can be hired at a lower salary level,” said Ron Singer, associate vice president for academic affairs told the State Journal.
Moreover, UW will likely have a hard time competing for new faculty due to the below-average-salaries UW currently pays. At UW-Milwaukee salaries were almost 6 percent below their peer group median while the other four-year UW schools were 7.88 below the median.
-compiled from staff reports