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The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

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Fall 2014 Headliners

Joe+Vale+of+Tiki+Shack+is+the+recipient+of+The+Badger+Herald++Editorial+Boards+Melvin+Gordon++Award+for+Running+like+Hell.
Emily Shullaw
Joe Vale of Tiki Shack is the recipient of The Badger Herald Editorial Board’s Melvin Gordon Award for Running like Hell.

The Badger Herald Editorial Board aims to be a voice of the student community, weighing in on issues of importance to students regarding campus, local and state affairs.

As we approach the end of another semester, the Ed Board has chosen to recognize six significant moments that happened in the last four months. Here are the semester’s most award-worthy occurrences.

The Melvin Gordon Award for Running like Hell: Joe Vale of Tiki Shack

Emily Shullaw/The Badger Herald

Not even two months ago, things were starting to look up for everyone’s favorite State Street shit show, Tiki Shack. The “establishment” has had a rough couple of years, with Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, saying they have the reputation for being “the most embarrassing and problematic establishment” in his district.

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https://badgerherald.com/news/2014/10/16/tiki-shack-to-change-management-city-hopes-for-improvements/#.VIcxuxNNYqY
In October, however, there was a glimmer of hope. Two current managers were planning to take over the bar after the existing owner, Joe Vale, failed to show up to several Alcohol License Review Committee meetings. Not surprisingly, the purpose of the meetings was to discuss disciplinary matters.

Alas, it was not all sunshine and mini cocktail umbrellas for Tiki Shack. In mid-November, Tiki Shack inadvertently (we hope) played host to a brawl between two teenagers and a 38-year-old. Further, it was discovered that one of the potential new owners of Tiki Shack was facing substantial battery and disorderly conduct charges for allegedly attacking two 18-year-olds while he was drunk on a Saturday afternoon. What’s more, the current holder of Tiki Shack’s liquor license, Vale, has allegedly skipped town altogether.

https://badgerherald.com/news/2014/11/20/tiki-shack-in-trouble-with-madison-police-again/

All things considered, Vale may actually have gotten the best of this situation by running the fuck away from everything. For this, we award him The Melvin Gordon Award for Running Like Hell.

The Blank Check Award: The Morgridges

Emily Shullaw/The Badger Herald

The slate has remained largely blank for Chancellor Rebecca Blank’s year-and-a-half stint at the University of Wisconsin. Aside from mentioning potentially raising out-of-state tuition last year and backing diversity initiatives on campus, Blank’s tenure here thus far has been less than eventful.

Perhaps some of the most note-worthy news about Blank this year comes not from the chancellor herself, but the philanthropy of two UW alums: John and Tashia Morgridge.

In mid-November, the Morgridges donated $100 million to UW to help fund endowed faculty positions.

Here’s how it works: any donor that wants to establish an endowed position, which is done by donating the funds needed to maintain it, will only have to front half the usual amount. The remaining half will be covered by the Morgridges.

These funds are important for retaining researchers at UW and incentivizing the recruitment of others.

However, this $100 million isn’t a blank check; the funds are committed as endowment gifts. Only 4.5 percent of these funds will be available in income yearly, meaning it will only generate an expendable amount of $4.5 million per year max, before the funds are matched.

Therefore, just because the university received this donation doesn’t excuse lawmakers from defunding UW or de-emphasizing the need of state support for higher education.

For their generosity, we award the Morgridges the Blank Check Award.

The Why?-fi Award for “New” Technology: Proposal for Wi-Fi on city buses

Emily Shullaw/The Badger Herald

Welcome back to 2004, when car phones were still a thing and the public couldn’t wait for the day they could check MySpace during their morning commute.

And at long last, that day is finally here! Or at least with city plans to invest $100,000 installing Wi-Fi on Metro buses by 2015, our days of thumb twiddling could soon be over.

Not so fast. Anyone who’s taken a Badger Bus knows that the Wi-Fi experience onboard a moving vehicle is hardly useful on a three-hour cross-state trip, much less a 10-minute jog across town. Not to mention that most Wi-Fi enabled commuters have already solved this problem with data plans (or games or e-readers or books or newspapers) which continue to work fine.

Not only is this idea a decade late, but it turns out to be at least partially responsible for a proposed increase in rates the university pays for bus passes — a small but noteworthy 5 cents extra per ride.

https://badgerherald.com/news/2014/10/15/proposal-to-add-wi-fi-on-all-city-buses-could-raise-student-bus-fees/
But more importantly there is a bigger problem than your morning commute — a significant number of Madisonians lack home internet access.

So while bus Wi-Fi sounds like a great Jetson era idea, but in reality, it will turn out to be a pretty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ expenditure of money.

We should mention a second city proposal to invest $150,000 to test a city-wide 4G Internet solution. This is a more sane idea for the current decade and will further help close the digital divide.

https://badgerherald.com/news/2014/11/24/madison-weighing-options-for-city-wide-high-speed-internet/

Even students, who live in Wi-Fi-accessible areas around campus, will likely benefit from the expansion of Internet access to more homes in the city. With Google Fiber, cities discovered investing in Internet infrastructure can shock monopolistic cable companies into upping speeds and dropping prices. As such we award this proposal the Why?-fi Award for being an incredibly lackluster display of “innovation.”

The Award for Best Election Year Homeless Advocate: Mayor Paul Soglin

Emily Shullaw/The Badger Herald

The weather outside is frightful and a shelter would be delightful, but the homeless have nowhere to go. Politics. Politics. Let it snow.

For the second year in a row, Madison inexcusably failed to secure a winter day shelter for the city’s homeless. But not to worry, this year Mayor Paul Soglin finally decided to step in as The Advocate for Madison’s homeless and in none other than an election year.

Soglin proposed allocating $24 million to curb homelessness earlier this year through the newly minted Affordable Housing Fund. The proposal passed in the 2015 Capital Budget allocated the funds over five years in an effort to provide up to 1,000 units of housing for low-income families. One-third of the units were proposed to serve the homeless.

Homelessness in Madison is not new to Soglin, but his disposition to the problem is. The mayor has previously been rather contemptuous toward the population, expressing frustration about their presence around him (Last year he proposed to ban homeless people from gathering in the City-County building, on the grounds of complaints that the homeless smelled, slept in the bathrooms and allegedly drank hand sanitizer as alcohol.)

But that was 2013, and this year is different; election season is right around the corner. Come spring Soglin will be running as the incumbent mayoral candidate against longer-time supporters of fixing the city’s homelessness problem such as Ald. Scott Resnick, District 8, and former alder Bridget Maniaci.

Politics aside, at least something is being done. So congrats Soglin, you win the award for best Election Year Homeless Advocate. You did good.

The Chief Keef Award: MPD Chief Mike Koval

Madison Police Chief Mike Koval made waves this September when he boldly came out in support of marijuana legalization. It was pretty dope, but not just because weed is fun.

Koval pointed to racial disparities in incarceration rates and a history of poor enforcement as reasons to decriminalize weed possession. He rightfully added that Madison police have much more important issues to focus on, including the rise of heroin use and other more serious crimes.

As Koval bluntly put it, marijuana enforcement strategies have been mostly unsuccessful. “It just didn’t work. It wasn’t effective,” he said.

https://badgerherald.com/news/2014/09/22/mpd-chief-koval-supports-legalization-of-marijuana/

Koval knows what’s up. According to a data report from the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison police arrest or cite black citizens for weed possession at rate of about 12 times more than it does white people. This is in line with national trends, and points to a trend of unnecessary incarceration and prosecution of minor offenders, who tend to be minorities living in lower socioeconomic areas.

Arresting people from poorer backgrounds for minor weed possession is ineffective and harmful to communities, and we applaud Koval for understanding this and speaking out about it.

Koval has proven himself to be forward-thinking, progressive and pragmatic, and for that he has earned the Chief Keef Award.

Chief Koval, stay chill.

The Participation Award: Mary Burke

This year’s gubernatorial election yielded more of the same as incumbent Gov. Scott Walker won by a healthy margin of six percentage points and the state Legislature remained a bright Republican red. Democratic challenger and political newcomer Mary Burke ran on the now tiredly familiar campaign of “Vote for me, a generic Democrat, because I’m not the evil overlord Scott Walker.”

In her concession speech, a dejected Burke spoke words of hope and continuing the fight for Democratic policy in a polarized political environment. Then, just a mere six days after calling upon others to continue in the face of hardship, Burke promptly announced her decisive departure from statewide politics.

Burke told reporters she would likely seek a second term on the Madison school board but “she’s not looking to remain a big player in Democratic Party politics statewide.” Burke also chalked up her (expected) loss to incumbency advantage.

So if we thought Burke’s vehement calls for persistence would be adhered to by Burke herself, it looks like we were mistaken. However, to say the public will even miss the rather mediocre candidate in the first place seems like a mistake of equal magnitude.

If success is measured by how many times you get back up rather than if you fall, Burke seems to have had an unsuccessful political career in more ways than one. C for effort, Mary. C for effort. For Burke’s lackluster and short-lived statewide political career, we award her the Participation Award.

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