FREE WHITEWATER

Assault Awareness & Prevention, Culture, Local Government, Politics, University

The Better Way to Address Sexual Violence on Campus

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Neil Heinen is the editorial director of WISC-TV in Madison.  I have little idea of his politics; we’ve never met.

I do know, however, that his station’s position on how universities should address allegations of sexual assault is better – ethically and practically – than the approach that UW-Whitewater has adopted.

Heinen is entirely right: no matter how disturbing the allegations, the only ethical response is to support a thorough, impartial, independent inquiry.

By contrast, when a graduate of UW-Whitewater spoke in a television interview – following the filing of a multi-page complaint with the U.S. Department of Education for the mishandling of her sexual assault complaint to the school –  Dr. Telfer had the ability or inclination only to issue a dull, prepared statement. 

Nothing about the victim, nothing about supporting inquiries concerning years of escalating assault numbers at UW-Whitewater, but instead an administrator’s certainty that students should feel safe. 

Whitewater’s political culture is littered with others of this ilk.  One cannot imagine a single official in the city – not from the university, not from the school district, not from the city administration – saying anything like what editorial director Heinen said, about a university that he and his station so obviously support. 

In fact, Heinen says what he says, undoubtedly, because he does support UW-Madison, and each and every individual attending that school.

Locally, one cannot be a ‘Whitewater Advocate’ while simultaneously ignoring the very ills that afflict Whitewater.

See, also, the It’s On Us Campaign and Not Alone, a site with resources of support for those who have experienced sexual assault .

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.15.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty-three. Sunrise is 6:11 and sunset 7:37, for 13h 25m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1912, the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic:

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning of 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City, US. The sinking resulted in the loss of more than 1,500 passengers and crew making it one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history. The RMS Titanic, the largest ship afloatat the time it entered service, was the second of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, and was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast with Thomas Andrews as her naval architect. Andrews was among those lost in the sinking. On her maiden voyage, she carried 2,224 passengers and crew.

After leaving Southampton on 10 April 1912, Titanic called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland before heading west to New York.[2] On 14 April 1912, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. ship’s time. The collision caused the ship’s hull plates to buckle inwards along her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea; the ship gradually filled with water. Meanwhile, passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partly loaded. A disproportionate number of men were left aboard because of a “women and children first” protocol followed by some of the officers loading the lifeboats.[3] By 2:20 a.m., she broke apart and foundered, with well over one thousand people still aboard. Just under two hours after Titanic foundered, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene of the sinking, where she brought aboard an estimated 705 survivors.Under the command of Edward Smith, the ship’s passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere throughout Europe seeking a new life in North America. A wireless telegraph was provided for the convenience of passengers as well as for operational use. Although Titanic had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, there were not enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard due to outdated maritime safety regulations. Titanic only carried enough lifeboats for 1,178 people—slightly more than half of the number on board, and one-third her total capacity.

On this day in 1987, the Brewers get a first (for them):

On this date Juan Nieves recorded the Brewers first no-hitter, making him the first Puerto Rican-born pitcher to accomplish this feat in the Major Leauge. [Source: Milwaukee Brewers Timeline]

Here’s the Wednesday game in Puzzability‘s Capital Gains series:

This Week’s Game — April 13-17
Capital Gains
We’ve got filers all over the globe this week. For each day, we’ve taken the name of a world capital, added a letter, and scrambled all the letters to get a new word that is a type of person or people. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the capital followed by the longer word. The clue includes the lengths of the answer words in parentheses.
Example:
Simpletons from Scandinavia (4,5)
Answer:
Oslo fools
What to Submit:
Submit the phrase, with the capital first (as “Oslo fools” in the example), for your answer.
Wednesday, April 15
Postal worker from southeast Asia (6,7)

Beautiful Whitewater, City, New Whitewater

So What Do You Think of Whitewater?

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People, including some from far from our city, often ask me what I think of Whitewater. 

I think Whitewater is beautiful, and that despite present challenges she has a bright future. 

Sometimes people say they might like a warmer place in winter, or a bigger place all year.  They say this sincerely, and their wishes are meaningful to them. 

Yet, there is no warmer place, there is no bigger place, that would also be a better place.  I cannot imagine living anywhere else.

That’s what I think, and that’s how I feel. 

City, Marketing, Press

The Meaning of Whitewater’s Not-Always-Mentioned Demographics

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Our signs say that Whitewater, the city proper, has a population of around fifteen thousand.  We do.

What they don’t say, and what we know but don’t always mention, is that a significant portion of that population is attending the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

So much, when looking at data from the ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates (2013 Table), that the adult population in college is unquestionably the largest cohort by daily activity among all adults in the city. Not every young person in the city attends university, but so great is the group of young men & women that those attending college is the largest vocational group in the city. 

(The city’s median age is 21.9 in the same table.  In nearby Fort Atkinson, it’s 37.9.)

Those many students are vital to the city’s economic life.  There’s not the slightest chance Whitewater would have the same economic prospects without them. 

But if college students are the largest vocational group in the city, their presence means that news, marketing, etc., directed to non-student residents reaches a much smaller part of the city than some wish to admit.

In this city of thousands, many of whom are at school, how far does the influence of our local notables really reach? 

I have a guess that readership of local papers is poor, considering the health of newspapers, generally.  The only way to be certain would be for the local press to release independent, audited circulation figures that had numbers for Whitewater, specifically.  Even then, one would like to know about the age of those readers. 

Print publishers aren’t rushing to discuss those numbers.  One doesn’t have to guess long to conclude correctly why they’re not rushing.

Looking at election results, attendance at public meetings, and the probable circulation of press accounts that herald officials’ accomplishments, the reach of Whitewater’s local notables isn’t very wide. 

Some officials are popular, but others not so much as the pages of the Daily Union would suggest. 

By contrast, there are lots of people in Whitewater interested in city life, including its politics, who are in no way insiders.  They are among the most vibrant residents in the community.  Their numbers dwarf the number of town fathers.

In a city disproportionately young, and with a higher Hispanic population than our census figures state, most meetings skew older and whiter than the city’s averages. 

(There’s nothing wrong with being white; I’ve been white my whole life.  There’s nothing wrong with being older; I’ve been older than the city’s median age for quite a while.  Then again, this blog is the work of just one person, not a city committee or representative sample.) 

Almost no ordinary residents attend local WEDC meetings, CDA meetings, etc. The only way the Community Development Authority could get an ordinary crowd to the Innovation Center would be to change the city’s street signs so that people passing through town would accidentally land at the Tech Park. 

Reaching all Whitewater is a bigger job than reaching what a few wish to describe as Whitewater. 

As Whitewater is changing, those unwilling to see that what worked won’t keep working will find themselves surprised and frustrated. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.14.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in the Whippet City will be sunny with a high of sixty-five. Sunrise is 6:13 and sunset 7:36, for 13h 22m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets today at 5:30 PM.

It’s the 155th anniversary of the Pony Express, and Google has a doodle to commemorate that mail service. More than that, they have a video describing the Express and making and animated graphic about it —

On this day in 1953, the Braves debut in Milwaukee:

On this date the Milwaukee Braves made their official debut in Milwaukee, at the newly constructed County Stadium. They defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2, in 10 innings. Bill Bruton hit the game-winning home run. [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online]

Here’s the Tuesday game in Puzzability‘s Capital Gains series:

This Week’s Game — April 13-17
Capital Gains
We’ve got filers all over the globe this week. For each day, we’ve taken the name of a world capital, added a letter, and scrambled all the letters to get a new word that is a type of person or people. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the capital followed by the longer word. The clue includes the lengths of the answer words in parentheses.
Example:
Simpletons from Scandinavia (4,5)
Answer:
Oslo fools
What to Submit:
Submit the phrase, with the capital first (as “Oslo fools” in the example), for your answer.
Tuesday, April 14
Pigment-deficient people from western Europe (6,7)

 

WGTB

When Green Turns Brown: Introduction

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WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 1 in a series.

Here in our small town, Whitewater’s city manager, wastewater superintendent, and the business interests behind them would like a waste digester into which they would import waste from other cities. They contend that this would be a green, commercial success for Whitewater.

In fact, they boast that other cities would somehow envy our city’s position as a repository for their municipal waste.

(This is one reason that Whitewater City Manager Cameron Clapper’s recent effort to describe the two-million-dollar digester project – part of a twenty-million dollar wastewater upgrade – as merely an increase in efficiency is easily refuted. By his wastewater superintendent’s own, excited account, this project fundamentally transforms Whitewater into a waste-importer. To claim otherwise is inaccurate, to put the matter charitably.)

After this importation, they insist that we’ll have clean energy. In City Manager Cameron Clapper’s words, trucking others’ filth in and out Whitewater would be “probably the greenest process we have in the city.”

That’s unlikely.

I’ve followed the progress of this project, read the available (but tellingly incomplete) information the city and vendors have put forward, and watched as local big-business insiders have none-too-subtly pushed for the project.

There’s a great deal here to consider: the fiscal, economic, environmental & health aspects of the plan, and the signs of local cronyism behind the project.

There are myriad questions that this city government hasn’t answered, presentations for over a year notwithstanding, and more than a few claims that are dubious to the point of absurdity. There’s been almost no serious public scrutiny of the project, least of all from Whitewater’s city manager or wastewater superintendent.

(All of the presenters on behalf of this project, both from the city and vendors, have shown a strong confidence that they can get what they want. That may be true, of course. The harder task, however, is to get what one wants, when it’s good to want it, while avoiding what no one wants.)

Having read what’s available, I’d say there’s a strong chance that the project will be useful as an example for communities beyond our own. It’s not simply a local matter. Friendly people inside and outside the city have convinced me that there’s use in a longer written work, and a documentary account of this project.

This wouldn’t have occurred to me, but their suggestions have proved persuasive.

Beginning on these pages, but ending elsewhere, I will publish the results of an examination into this project, under the title, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN.

Here’s a general plan:

1. I will publish here each Monday (and other days if necessary). Each post in this series will have a category tag and a small logo for easy identification.

2. I will publish my notes, questions, memoranda, etc., openly on these pages. Those advocating this project have withheld much (as I will demonstrate); I will, by contrast, publish openly.

This is not because I consider my work better than others’; it’s not. It’s because I am confident that relying on a open method of inquiry is a better method, as markets are better at allocation than command economies, or as open government is better than a closed regime.

The advantage lies not in the man, but in the method.

3. In our small town, a project like some of these wastewater improvements, along with subsequent, needed changes to our water system, will cost tens of millions, and require years.

Critically, unlike erecting a single building and advancing numbers of jobs supposedly gained, this project’s effects on the community will only grow over time. Long tail consequences may be present here in a way they haven’t been for other projects, even expensive ones.

4. I cannot say how long this series will last, but I’d roughly estimate at least a year, with time after that to complete a written account and accompanying documentary. (I’ll rely on others’ guidance in that regard; I’ve never undertaken a project like this.)

5. Candidly, I didn’t expect to undertake a project like this, about a small city’s program to import waste for supposed commercial gain. This is the city administration’s idea; it would never have occurred to me even two years ago that anyone in Whitewater would push for this project.

6. The city administration wants a completed local project, but those goals are more narrow than my inquiry. They want to be done, presumably, and have their project to show the city.

I’d rather take whatever time is necessary, and consider several aspects of this project, and show my results to the city and others beyond. My approach is especially suited to a project like this, because its consequences will build over time.

In this effort, I’ll make three promises:

First, I will write and speak openly about the whole review: my questions, the results of my inquiries, what leaves me uncertain, and thoughts on where the inquiry will lead. While proponents likely want to sell a plan, showing some parts and concealing others, I’ll advance my ideas and views openly through the whole of this.

I am convinced that an open presentation of ideas will prove superior to marketing, selling, plotting, and positioning, etc.

Second, I will approach this topic in an orderly way. That was, after all, the theme of a post from January 2014 entitled, Steps for Blogging on a Policy or Proposal.

Some posts in the series will skip from topic to topic, but this project will progress with an underlying method.

Third, I’ll do my best to use varied media and means to support an inquiry: posts, video clips, short-form video documentaries, audio clips, an ongoing journal of the inquiry, with formal requests and actions, all as needed. These several means won’t begin at the same time, but will come along as I move through an inquiry.

Some of these are new for me; others are familiar. I’ll post here, but use other media (beyond FREE WHITEWATER’s sister blogs) to convey a common message to different audiences.

I’ll unite all of these media about the topic under a common logo, so that they will be easy to identify.

Much has been withheld from public review, but a fair amount about this importation plan has been slowly published online. By the city’s account, that information should be enough to form a judgment. (City government cannot simultaneously contend that they’ve been adequately transparent and yet haven’t offered enough for others’ critical inquiry.)

This project is notable because it’s not simply about processing local waste, but about much more: importation of waste from other places, into this small place, and how a few may profit from that importation at the expense of many others.

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Next Monday: Preliminary Questions about the Digester Proposal.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.13.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday brings a rainy morning, with gradual clearing and a high of sixty-four. Sunrise is 6:15 and sunset 7:35, for 13h 19m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

At 3:30 PM, a city committee meets to consider Bicycle and Pedestrian System Way Finding. Later, at 6:30 PM, Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets.

On this day in 1743, Thomas Jefferson is born:

The third of ten children, Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743 OS) at the family home, in a one and a half story farmhouse in Shadwell, not far from Richmond and the Virginia wilderness. According to his autobiography, Jefferson’s earliest memory was being handed to a slave on horseback and carried 50 miles away to their new home which overlooked the Rivanna River, Goochland County, Virginia, now part of Albemarle County. Much of his correspondence to relatives makes mention of this memory. His father was Peter Jefferson, a planter and surveyor who died when Jefferson was fourteen, never getting the chance to measure up to him as an adult. Jefferson’s facial appearance resembled that of his father, but his slim physical form resembled that of his mother’s family.[2] He was of English and possible Welsh descent, although this remains unclear.[3] His mother was Jane Randolph, daughter of Isham Randolph, a ship’s captain and sometime planter. Peter and Jane married in 1739.[4] Thomas Jefferson showed little interest in learning about his ancestry; on his father’s side he only knew of the existence of his grandfather.[2][3][5][b]

Before the widower William Randolph, an old friend of Peter Jefferson, died in 1745, he appointed Peter as guardian to manage his Tuckahoe Plantation and care for his four children. That year the Jeffersons relocated to Tuckahoe, where they lived for the next seven years before returning to Shadwell in 1752. Peter Jefferson died in 1757 and the Jefferson estate was divided between Peter’s two sons, Thomas and Randolph.[6] Thomas inherited approximately 5,000 acres (2,000 ha; 7.8 sq mi) of land, including Monticello, and between 20 and 40 slaves. He took control of the property after he came of age at 21. The precise amount of land and number of slaves that Jefferson inherited is estimated.[7]

Puzzability has a new, geography-themed series this week:

This Week’s Game — April 13-17
Capital Gains
We’ve got filers all over the globe this week. For each day, we’ve taken the name of a world capital, added a letter, and scrambled all the letters to get a new word that is a type of person or people. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the capital followed by the longer word. The clue includes the lengths of the answer words in parentheses.
Example:
Simpletons from Scandinavia (4,5)
Answer:
Oslo fools
What to Submit:
Submit the phrase, with the capital first (as “Oslo fools” in the example), for your answer.
Monday, April 13
One eschewing clothing from northern Africa (5,6)

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.12.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday brings a high of sixty-seven, and a one-fifth chance of afternoon showers. Sunrise is 6:16 and sunset 7:34, for 13h 17m 07s. The moon is a waning crescent with 46.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

The latest FW poll asked readers whether they thought Godzilla would be a good tourism ambassador for Japan. Over two-thirds of respondents thought that he would.

On this day in 1861, Confederate artillery opens fire on Fort Sumter, beginning fighting during the Civil War:

On Friday, April 12, 1861, at 4:30 a.m., Confederate batteries opened fire, firing for 34 straight hours, on the fort. Edmund Ruffin, noted Virginian agronomist and secessionist, claimed that he fired the first shot on Fort Sumter. His story has been widely believed, but Lieutenant Henry S. Farley, commanding a battery of two 10 inch siege mortars on James Island fired the first shot at 4:30 A.M. (Detzer 2001, pp. 269–71). No attempt was made to return the fire for more than two hours. The fort’s supply of ammunition was not suited for the task; also, there were no fuses for their explosive shells, which means that they could not explode. Only solid iron balls could be used against the Rebel batteries. At about 7:00 A.M., Captain Abner Doubleday, the fort’s second in command, was given the honor of firing the Union’s first shot, in defense of the fort. He missed, in part because Major Anderson did not use the guns mounted on the highest tier, the barbette tier (where the guns could engage the confederate batteries better), where the gunners would be more exposed to Confederate fire. The firing continued all day. The Union fired slowly to conserve ammunition. At night the fire from the fort stopped, but the Confederates still lobbed an occasional shell into Sumter. On Saturday, April 13, the fort was surrendered and evacuated. During the attack, the Union colors fell. Lt. Norman J. Hall risked life and limb to put them back up, burning off his eyebrows permanently. A Confederate soldier bled to death having been wounded by a misfiring cannon. One Union soldier died and another was mortally wounded during the 47th shot of a 100 shot salute, allowed by the Confederacy. Afterwards the salute was shortened to 50 shots. Accounts, such as in the famous diary of Mary Chesnut, describe Charleston residents along what is now known as The Battery, sitting on balconies and drinking salutes to the start of the hostilities.

The Fort Sumter Flag became a popular patriotic symbol after Major Anderson returned North with it. The flag is still displayed in the fort’s museum. A supply ship Star of the West took all the garrison members to New York City. There they were welcomed and honored with a parade on Broadway.