Badger Catholic faith, homosexuality talk met with campus community concerns

By Noe Goldhaber STAFF WRITER

Badger Catholic, a registered student organization (RSO) at the University of WisconsinMadison, hosted Catholic speaker and author Kim Zember for a talk about “her personal experience with homosexuality and life with Christ” followed by a Q&A session last Thursday. The event was promoted in an email to all students and met with concerns from some due to Zember’s rhetoric.

According to the Badger Catholic budget provided by Associated Students of Madison (ASM) Grant Allocation Committee Chair Andrew Pietroske, the ASM finances the Badger Catholic guest speakers program. Out of Badger Catholic’s almost $60,000 budget, $9,500 goes to this series.

Next year, Badger Catholic’s guest speaker program fund will have $14,400 in funding, an increase of almost $5,000. Last fall, Wisconsin Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) controversially hosted Matt

Walsh with funding in part from a similar ASM grant, according to the budget.

ASM distributes segregated fees — charges all UW-Madison students pay — to RSOs in a “viewpoint neutral” manner, meaning an organization’s viewpoints or history will not be considered when making financial decisions, according to an ASM bylaw and the United States Supreme Court decision UW System v. Southworth.

Due to the phrasing of the email and the invitation to students of all backgrounds, some students believed the event would be supportive toward LGBTQ+ identities. However, after further investigation into Zember’s background, some students expressed concerns about the talk.

“Upon receiving the email, we felt very strongly about coming just because of the way things were worded. A lot of words in the email were very inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community,” said Mia Warren, a UW-Madison student and member of Sex Out Loud. “A lot of people, from the wording of the email, did not understand that the talk would be encouraging people not to act on the ‘gay lifestyle.’”

In a series of videos on her website, Zember describes herself as a “Once Married Lesbian,” detailing her transition toward her faith and away from the “gay lifestyle.”

During her talk on campus, Zember touched on these ideas, and compared homosexuality and pedophilia, while defending a “natural” family structure with one mother and one father. She then pulled on scripture, calling homosexuality “objectively disordered.”

While some of the audience included regular attendees of Badger Catholic events, many individuals who chose to ask questions during the Q&A challenged Zember’s ideas. Leaders of Sex Out Loud decided to attend the event to offer up an alternative perspective on Zember’s ideas. Jane Houseal, a UW-Madison student and representative from Sex Out Loud, spoke to attendees during the

Q&A session.

“We knew that there would be people in that audience who were questioning their faith and questioning their sexuality,” Houseal said. “As someone who is part of the LGBTQ community and likes to advocate for sexual health and equality all the time, I wanted to let everyone know, and everyone in the church know, that there are other options and that we are willing to help them find those other options.”

Sex Out Loud posted a statement on social media critiquing the usage of “pro-LGBTQIA+ language to discuss potentially harmful topics on the basis of faith and religion.” Similar to Badger Catholic, Sex Out Loud hosts guest speakers on campus, one of which spoke on the “Feminist Sex Toy Revolution” Monday evening.

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By Francesca Pica CITY NEWS EDITOR

Workers at the State Street Starbucks location announced Tuesday they will file to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

In a letter to Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan signed by 36 sta members and shared with The Daily Cardinal, workers at the Starbucks location in downtown Madison called for the formation of a union in response to “intimidation, labor cuts and unclear standards” from the company’s upper management.

“Recent events in our store and around the nation have shown us that we cannot depend on the kindness of corporate to consider what is best for us,” the letter read. “Crucial decisions are made about store operations by those who are so disconnected from our community and our day-to-day reality. We deserve a voice.”

The letter stated unionization was the best way to protect workers from retaliatory behavior and allow them representation in negotiations over working conditions.

“By forming a union, we are inspiring and nurturing the human spirit — one person, one cup, one neighborhood and one unionized store at a time,” the letter said.

Matt Cartwright, a shift supervisor at the State Street location, told The Daily Cardinal workers felt compelled to act because the company’s leadership has made decisions that deprioritize their wellbeing.

“Everyone has a general sense that they don’t feel respected, they don’t feel like they have a voice,” Cartwright said. “They feel like they’re expendable, that corporate views them as expendable.”

The State Street Starbucks location is one of the largest Starbucks stores to seek unionization, according to Cartwright. Located near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, the store employs over 50 workers, and many of them are parttime student employees.

Evan McKenzie, a UW-Madison senior and organizer at the Capitol Square Starbucks location, is currently partnering with the workers on State Street to assist them through the unionization process. McKenzie said though the State Street location is very profitable, the company has not listened to requests for improvements in working conditions.

“They make the company lots of money, they’re extremely successful and they have not done any unionizing campaigns [previously],” he said. “State Street is asking for those promises to be kept. They waited, they did what Starbucks asked and where did that get them?”

Allie Kerr, a part-time Starbucks barista at the State Street location who also has a job as a full-time educator, believes the company’s policies regarding working hours have harmed part-time and student workers. Starbucks recently implemented a minimum hours requirement mandating employees work at least 12 hours per week.

“Some of our students who are also working other jobs are having to put more of their time into Starbucks than they really can, and people who really need those hours to pay their bills aren’t getting quite as many,” Kerr said. “As a result of that initiative, we lost between five and 10 really strong partners that worked one or two days a week.”

Labor advocates have long criticized Starbucks for allegedly employing widespread union- busting tactics in locations across the country, including withholding benefits from unionized stores and retaliation against workers for union advocacy. A judge for the NLRB ruled in March that Starbucks violated federal labor law multiple times in its attempts to shut down union organizing in New York stores.

In his March 2023 testimony to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz denied allegations that the company engaged in union-busting.

“We want to treat everyone with respect and dignity,” Schultz said. “However, I have the right, and the company has the right, to have a preference, and our preference is to maintain the direct relationship we’ve had with our employees.”

Kerr said the store has already seen increased scrutiny from upper management after rumors spread that the location was planning to unionize in early March.

“We, as a result of just those rumors, did see an increased corporate presence in our store,” she stated. “I expect that might continue, but I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to have a positive dialogue.”

Cartwright said he and other workers have drawn inspiration from other Starbucks union organizing across the country. He said organizers from the Starbucks located on Capitol Square, which became the first Madison location to unionize in June 2022, have provided valuable support to workers on State Street.

“We are one group, and we’re willing to stand hand-in-hand together,” he stated.

Kerr said she hopes State Street location’s significance in the down- town Madison community will give other local union advocates a stronger position in negotiations.

“We’re super prominent and visible in the community, and we make a lot of money for Starbucks,” she said. “We are hopeful that by adding our voices to this already-loud chorus, we might be able to put some positive pressure to have everybody come to the table.”

After the workers file for unionization, Starbucks will then decide whether to voluntarily recognize the union. According to McKenzie, Starbucks has never voluntarily recognized a location looking to unionize, so he expects the NLRB to intervene.

If a company refuses to recognize a union, the NLRB will conduct an election in which the employees will vote on whether to unionize. If a majority of workers present votes in favor, the NLRB will certify the union.

McKenzie said much of the unionization push’s continued success will depend on support from the UW-Madison students who frequent the store. He encouraged students to send messages of support and tip workers more generously.

“That store is the student voice,” McKenzie said. “The support that they will receive from other students at UW-Madison is going to be essential in this fight because it’s scary to unionize, especially as a student.”

Cartwright said the push marks a positive shift for the labor movement in Madison and across the country.

“It’s a movement of hope,” Cartwright said. “It’s a movement of hope for our store. It’s a movement of hope for Madison. It’s a movement of hope for the nationwide labor movement. Democracy starts here in the workplace.”

By Jasper Bernstein STAFF WRITER Stacey

Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Educational Policy Studies professor specializing in the education of immigrant communities, and Miron Livny, a professor of Computer Science with an emphasis in high-throughput computing, have been named Vilas Research Professors.

The Vilas Research Professorship (RSP), funded through the William F. Vilas Trust Estate, is an award granted to UW-Madison faculty members. The Vilas Research Professorships were established to promote academic progress and are awarded to those who have demonstrated exceptional research skills, exceptional qualifications and potential. The selected individual must have made significant contributions to the university’s research mission, and garnered widespread national and international recognition for their high-quality research.

Carryover of the award to the next fiscal year is not allowed, and funds must benefit the recipient’s research activities. Flexible funds go toward research expenses and a reduced teaching load, and may not be used to provide additional salary support for the award winner or other faculty members, for scholarships or fellowships, to directly charge tuition or to purchase alcohol.

Lee, who also serves as the associ- role of education in the assimilation of immigrants into the United States. Lee is also the author of Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth and Up Against Whiteness: Race, school and immi- ate dean in the School of Education, was recognized as the Frederick Erickson Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) Professor of Educational Policy Studies and an a liate faculty member in Asian American Studies. Her research is focused on the grant youth.

Professor Livny, who also serves as the principal scientist at Core Computational Technology of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, is the founding director of the Center for High Throughput Computing.

Livny joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1983, formed shared research computing on the UW–Madison campus and contributed to Nobel Prize-winning endeavors such as the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

“I am honored and thrilled to be named a Vilas Research Professor,” Lee said. “[I] look forward to continuing research that examines the complex intersections of immigration, race and education, particularly for Asian American communities.”

“By freely providing the software that reliably implements the mechanisms required to build mutual trust, to facilitate sharing and to handle large ensembles of tasks, research computing communities were formed worldwide,” said Livny. “These include national providers of computing services, like the OSG consortium where [I am] the founding Technical Director, campus wide communities and some of the largest international science endeavors.”

The award provides a faculty salary of $10,000, a flexible research fund of $50,000 per fiscal year and a retirement supplement of $2,500 per year.