University of Wisconsin-Madison
“ROCK OF AGES” SHAKES THE OVERTURE CENTER
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Thursday, February 14, 2019
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‘Not for sale’: Students say activism could save the WI Idea from Foxconn BySydney Widell NEWS MANAGER
COURTESY OF SONALI GUPTA
University security responded to a Union South demonstration Friday. Protesters hoped to send a message to the UW System Board of Regents.
Less than a minute after student protesters draped their hand-painted banners over the second floor railing at Union South, campus security forced the small group to roll up their flags and issued some of them warnings. There weren’t very many people in the union at 8:45 a.m. that Friday morning to witness the brief display. But on the next floor, the UW System Board of Regents were beginning to file into to Varsity Hall for their February meeting. And while the students’ banners hung, their message was loud and clear: “No Foxconn at UW-Madison.” The Board of Regents entered into the $100 million investment agreement with Foxconn last August. The deal will allow the Taiwanese tech giant to fund a new interdisciplinary research facility within the College of Engineering, which will house collaborations with the company’s planned manufacturing complex in southeast Wisconsin. It was the largest private gift in the school’s history, Chancellor Rebecca Blank said at the time. But the terms of the partnership have left many, including the Teaching Assistants Association, concerned that the deal could place the university’s intellectual property in the hands of a private company. More, it fears that Foxconn’s presence on campus will run counter to UW-Madison’s legacy as a public land-grant university dedicated to excellence in research and public service. “We want the Board of Regents to know that we know they are complicit in Foxconn’s involvement here,” said Sonali Gupta, a graduate student studying biophysics and a member of the TAA. “This is the privatization of a public institution and we are here to stop it.” The agreement between Foxconn
and the university describes three categories of research that could be generated at the Foxconn institute. The first type will produce intellectual property for the university, and the second will produce it for the company. The third type of research, which is classified as the institute’s “developed value” — research fully funded by Foxconn and undertaken with university partners — will produce intellectual property whose ownership must be negotiated between Foxconn and the school. Researchers themselves are excluded from negotiations. University officials say they are comfortable with these terms. “There are no restrictions on rights to publish and there is a framework to guide future discussions on specific intellectual property,” UW-Madison News and Media Relations Director Meredith McGlone said. “Nothing in the agreement supersedes the university’s existing policies and protections for faculty or student research.” While McGlone said that UW-Madison “must be able to benefit from new discoveries and any intellectual property that results,” the language of the current contract could still leave space for negotiation regarding ownership of the discoveries and techniques that will emerge from the new Foxconn institute. Gupta sees room for the company to take advantage of work done by university researchers — part of a culture of corporate exploitation she thinks has already manifested itself in Foxconn’s rigorous on-campus efforts to recruit students. It comes down to jobs, and the deal that brought Foxconn to Wisconsin in the first place. In its initial agreement with the state — the one that resulted in a record-setting incentive package that could be worth upwards of $4
billion to the company — Foxconn pledged that it would create 13,000 jobs for state workers. At the time, the bulk of those jobs were scheduled to be in manufacturing. But last month, Foxconn waffled back and forth on its original plan, saying for a time that its focus had shifted toward research and development and away from manufacturing. Foxconn still owes the state 13,000 jobs. And a move toward research could center its in-state hiring bottleneck over UW-Madison. The company has already established itself as a major recruiter on campus. Part of its deal with the university allows it to stage “Foxconn Days” outreach events at the College of Engineering, and it’s been no stranger at campus job fairs either. If graduating UW-Madison students could help meet Foxconn’s labor demands, the TAA believes those students may also have leverage in efforts to rein back the company’s presence on campus. “It’s absurd that the school would present a partnership with Foxconn as an opportunity for students when really it’s exploitation,” Gupta said. “This is one of those rare cases where student activism can actually have a lot of potency.” Gupta emphasized that conditions in Chinese Foxconn plants are so hazardous employees have threatened mass suicide. The TAA has actively worked to get its message to the students it believes Foxconn is targeting, but its efforts have been met with resistance from the university. On Friday, protestors were asked to leave Union South because their presence was disruptive, according to Wisconsin Union Directorate officials. Later, UW-Madison Police issued two of the students warnings, noting that they were not in one of
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UWPD promotes safety app amid concern from students By Molly Davis STAFF WRITER
U W-Mad i s o n Po l i c e Department promoted a free safety app on their website Wednesday in response to an increase in concern from students about safety both on and off campus. The app, called WiscGuardian, was originally launched by UWPD in August of 2017.
The article on the UWPD website describes that the app has a feature which lets the user build up a system of “guardians” consisting of friends and family who are automatically sent information about the user’s location in an emergency. Marc Lovicott, director of Communications at UWPD, said the app was developed as a tool students can use to easily reach the police in
both emergency and non-emergency situations by the touch of a button. “It’s a pretty slick app that’s been around for a while, but we just started promoting it more in light of some incidents we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks,” Lovicott said. Sophie Morris, a freshman at UW-Madison, has recently been working to learn more about safety measures both on and off
campus. Her petition to increase the number of blue light emergency phones on campus has now gained over 1,200 signatures. Morris said that she didn’t previously know about the WiscGuardian app and thinks that more should be done to raise awareness about it. “I wish that so many more people knew about this app,” Morris said. “Having tools like this that
can connect people to others who can help them in a dangerous situation is really essential.” Morris also said that she expects more work to be done to improve campus safety. “When you’re talking about people’s lives, futures and safety, there is no such thing as too much precaution. It’s all about making these resources not just available, but well-known,” she said.
“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”