THE UNIVERSITY TY OF WISCO WISCONSIN’S ONSIN’S IINDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1969 Thursday, October 20, 2011
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Volume Volum mee X m XLIII, LIIIII, Issue 33 LI
ARTS | CHEW ON THIS
NEWS | FEATURE
SPORTS | FOOTBALL
Stalking the truth about HFCS
New York Times’ Frugal Traveler will travel to Madison to take in the city’s best sights, dining and entertainment — on a budget. | 4
A taste of its own medicine
Is high fructose corn syrup sugar’s more evil, fattening, deadly twin, win, or is it just another sweet sucrose substitute? | 9
Like Wisconsin, Michigan State boasts a stable of capable running backs that can wear down a defense. Can UW stop it? | 12
Task force to tackle heroin ‘epidemic’ Joint effort from city and county will aim for early treatment, family interventions Katie Foran-McHale News Reporter
City and county leaders announced a new joint initiative Wednesday, which will focus on addressing increasing heroin usage and criminal incidents in the area, which they said have reached “epidemic”
proportions. The plan, which was announced by Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and Dane County Executive Joe Parisi in a joint press conference Wednesday, will be a collaboration between the city-county Public Health Department and the local nonprofit Safe Communities. The task force will highlight six areas of focus to reduce both access to and demand for opiates. Poisoning deaths have surpassed vehicular crashes as the leading cause of death in Dane
County, a statement from Parisi and Soglin said. According to the statement, both Parisi and Soglin are prepared to invest $78,276 from citycounty budgets into the initiative. “We need to recognize that [substance abuse] may occur in anybody’s home, anybody’s workplace — it may start not with illegal drugs, but with legal prescription medication,” Soglin said at the press conference. “We are going to get control, and we are going to have a profound impact in making a safer
community for everyone.” Key elements of the plan include reducing access to illegal and prescription drugs, providing drop boxes for drug disposal, combating inappropriate prescription use by monitoring prescription drugs and improving poisoning intervention by training first responders, he said. Soglin said confronting the rising demand for opiates in the area is an equally important task. The plan to decrease opiate use promotes early intervention, drug
treatment and recovery through screening assessments. It also emphasizes family interventions, community drug treatments and medication-assisted withdrawal treatment. While the number of overdoses and drug abuse has increased, so has the amount of enforcement and demand for treatment, Madison Police Department Chief Noble Wray and Amy Mosher Garvey, a psychotherapist at Women and Families Psychological Services, said.
“There is human despair taking place,” Wray said. “When people who are addicted are feeling as though they need to talk to someone and the fact that they feel very comfortable talking to an officer about their addiction is an indication that we are at an epidemic.” Those who seek treatment can find it difficult to receive the care they need, Garvey said. For outpatient treatment, the waiting list could be anywhere
TASK FORCE, page 2
Bill aims to grant schools greater control in sex ed. Proposal to allow for abstinence-only teaching; parents would select topics Sean Kirkby State Reporter Legislators, special interest groups and citizens weighed in on a controversial bill that would allow local school districts to decide what they want to include in their sexual education program, including abstinence-only education Wednesday. At the Senate Committee on Education hearing, Sen. Mary Lazich, R-Waukesha, said the bill grants more authority to school districts to create their own sexual education programs and overturns Wisconsin’s Healthy Youth Act. “[The bill] recognizes human growth and development is a sensitive topic and recognizes values differ among school districts,” Lazich, the bill’s co-author, told legislators. “Likewise, instruction methods and best practices
vary. Curriculum in a Madison classroom may not be the best practice in a Superior classroom.” The bill allows communities to select from a list of recommended topics such as reproductive anatomy, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and methods to develop healthy lifestyles, Lazich said. It will also focus on abstinence as the preferred method of sexual behavior. School districts would establish advisory boards of parents to make the decisions regarding the curriculum teachers will use. However, Sen. Chris Larsen, D-Milwaukee, said the bill does not provide a definition of what medically accurate information means and removes current statutes, which say the information taught in classrooms about sex must be supported by scientific research where appropriate information from published peer-reviewed journals and information recognized as accurate by medical associations. “If you don’t say what is medically accurate, you are
moving down a path where you are misleading kids about their sexual health,” Larson said. Lazich said the reason the bill did not include a definition was because other statutes do not list medical organizations, saying she wanted the bill to be consistent with them. She also said some of her fellow legislators felt some of the listed organizations were not comprehensive sexual education advocates and taking out the definition would allow school districts to get better scientific evidence. Larson also criticized Lazich’s bill for changing the wording of legislation so statutes would say abstinence is the only effective way to prevent pregnancy, rather than the most. “If you’re teaching children that, then they start thinking that’s the only way, that if I’m going to have sex, condoms are not going to protect me,” Larson said. “But if you teach that if you use condoms properly, then you can prevent sexually transmitted diseases, [then] you can prevent unwanted
Tom Zionkowski The Badger Herald
Sen. Chris Larsen, D-Milwaukee, criticized the bill to repeal the Healthy Youth Act for its emphasis on abstinence-only education in committee. pregnancy.” The bill also drew criticism from Rep. Tamara Grigsby, D-Milwaukee, who helped author the Healthy Youth Act.
A bookworm’s paradise The University of Wisconsin Libraries book sale, which spans four days, offers savvy book enthusiasts an inexpensive way to feed their hobby. The event, which was hosted by Friends of the Libraries, was open as a sneak preview on Wednesday. Zhao Lim The Badger Herald
Grigsby contended the bill for discrimates against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youths. Discrimination against
LGBTQ students is one of the most reported forms of discrimination in public schools, and repeal of the
HEARING, page 4
Union plan sees mixed support A margin of 23 votes decides strikes down advisory referendum on proposed expansion Bridget Conlin News Reporter The fall student government election drew to a close on Wednesday night as 23 votes from the student body struck down the advisory referendum on the proposed Memorial Union expansion. The Associated Students of Madison fall ballot gauged student opinion on two referenda and elected students to council seats, as well as one new member to the Student Services Finance Committee. The plans for the Memorial Union renovation, which would add a glass expansion off the existing theater, was surrounded by impassioned debate from the student body. The referendum was approved by Student Council during a Sept. 21 meeting after students speaking on the issue drove the extension of open
ELECTION, page 3 © 2011 BADGER HERALD
By the numbers
2340
Number of ‘Yes’ votes cast in favor of the proposed Memorial Union expansion in an advisory referendum
2363
Number of ‘No’ votes cast in opposition to the advisory referendum on the proposed Memorial Union expansion
11.3%
Total percentage of the student body that turned out to vote in the Associated Students of Madison’s fall elections