STUDENT MEDIA AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
MONDAY, MAY 4, 2015 · VOL 46, ISSUE 55 · BADGERHERALD.COM
TRADITION LIVES ON This weekend University of Wisconsin students turned up to prove the Mifflin Street Block Party is not dead. by Kiyoko Reidy
PAGE 3 Jason Chan The Badger Herald
Mayor’s stance on drifters brings attention to city’s shelters Soglin proposes clear initiatives to address public safety concerns around homelessness, but progress on affordable housing remains slow by Kiyoko Reidy City Editor
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin thinks the city has a “drifters” problem. But after Soglin suggested ways to get rid of State Street area dwellers, city officials are questioning
whether there is enough shelter to accommodate the homeless. The number of homeless people in downtown Madison is on the rise as warmer months approach. But, while Soglin wants people to stay in shelters instead of on the streets, Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said this isn’t a long-term solution.
Each person has a certain number of days they can stay at any given shelter, but this guideline is frequently put aside in winter due to the extreme cold. By March and April, many chronically homeless people surpass the number of days homeless shelters allot in order
to stay below capacity, and are forced to spend their nights on the street, Verveer said. A lack of affordable housing in Madison is one of the reasons that there are so many people on the streets, Verveer said. In Soglin’s campaign for mayor earlier this year he
called for an additional 5,000 units of low-income housing although the feasibility of the plan was called to question in mayoral debates. In an initial first step toward achieving that goal, the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority recently announced
the city received $23.3 million in federal tax credits toward the development of more low income housing units. These buildings, however, will not be built in the downtown area due to the high cost of land, Verveer said.
DRIFTERS, page 2
Enrollment trends show destigmatization of male nurses
Though University of Wisconsin’s Nursing School saw 6 percent increase in male applicants, minority representation still remains low by Maddie Makoul Herald Contributor
University of Wisconsin senior Ben Howell-Little is part of an increasing trend: He is a male nursing student. Howell-Little chose to join the profession because he wanted to dedicate his time to patients. “It would have been nice to know and hear from other male
nurses that the stigmatization is over-hyped,” Howell-Little said. “Hearing from someone like me that they haven’t had any bad experiences would have made me more likely to pursue this profession.” Despite a lingering social stigma for men in nursing, Ben Howell-Little, said he has had a generally positive experience and that nursing is increasingly seen as an option for men.
It seems awareness is increasing among men that nursing is no longer a profession restricted to females, he said. The trend is reflected in UW School of Nursing’s demographics. The nursing school saw a 6 percent increase in male applicants this year. For the upcoming fall term, 17 percent of applicants were men, which is an increase from 11 percent last year,
Karen Mittelstadt, director of admissions and advising for the School of Nursing said. “Some of the social stigmas with men in nursing have disappeared since the 1970s and the percentage of male nurses has gone up and so has the total number of applicants,” Mittelstadt said. Aside from some initial concerns about the social stigma of men in the nursing
profession, Howell-Little said he has only experienced two instances when a patient requested a female nurse. The nursing school, however, does not set specific goals or percentages for enrollment of minority students in a given semester, Mittelstadt said. Setting goals can be a good way to increase enrollment of underrepresented groups, Judi Hansen, executive director
INSIDE
of the Wisconsin Center for Nursing, said. “If there aren’t benchmarks, if you don’t set the goals, then you don’t have something set you are working toward,” Hansen said. Hansen said when schools and organizations set goals and assess the workforce, they are better positioned to
NURSING, page 2
GOP EFFICIENCY, page 8
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Chance the Rapper and AlunaGeorge light up the stage with Badger pride at third annual Revelry music festival.
The story of how University of Wisconsin’s last Division I baseball team coach walked away from the diamond.
The Badger Herald’s Editorial Board looks at Mayor Paul Soglin’s memo on the city’s ‘drifters’ problem.
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