Monday, April 24, 2017 - The Daily Cardinal

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Monday, April 24, 2017

Extraterrestrial life

The Flaming Lips +ARTS, page 4

+SCIENCE, page 2

Spring game: Alex Hornibrook

Psych pop

+SPORTS, page 8

UW loses top faculty recruit due to political climate in state

By Peter Coutu THE DAILY CARDINAL

A professor—the top faculty recruit for the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies— recently rejected an offer from UW-Madison, citing the “chilling effect” Wisconsin’s political climate has on the university, according to the chair of the department.

The professor, who the chair declined to name but specified that he researches transgender health care and transgender identity, decided to turn down the offer shortly after Wisconsin quit providing health insurance coverage for state workers seeking gender reassignment surgery.

“I certainly can’t control what the insurance board is deciding.

I can’t,” said Judith Houck, the GWS department chair. “It does have a chilling effect on people’s academic life, on their emotional life, on their personal life, to hear that some kinds of treatments that some people feel are lifesaving and essential are not being provided by our health care provider.”

Houck said the professor didn’t specifically mention the halting of coverage during their

telephone conversation.

Instead, he remained general in his critiques of legislators overreaching into UW syllabi, according to Houck. Still, she noted the timing, saying it led her to believe he heard about the situation, and that it “would have given him sort of ammunition for his beliefs that this is not a good place to do research on trans health, on trans identity.”

At UW-Madison, conflict over the decision to halt coverage has already started.

The ACLU of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit April 7 in the U.S. District Court in Madison for two UW-Madison employees who are transitioning with gender reassignment surgery, a procedure that costs more than $25,000. The lawsuit states they were illegally denied necessary health care because of the halting of their coverage.

Even in the face of health care changes and spats with legislators, Houck said UW-Madison is a great place to do “cutting-edge, radical or politically risky” research. She said she believes her department and the entirety of the university would have

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AMILEAH SUTLIFF/THE DAILY CARDINAL

TouchTunes players allow users to choose from thousands of songs, but some hip-hop artists are unavailable on players at campus-area bars such as Wando’s Bar and Grill and The Double U.

Several downtown Madison bars filter hip-hop music from TouchTunes players

By Gina Heeb THE DAILY CARDINAL

For a few dollars, TouchTunes jukeboxes allow students to choose the music they hear at their favorite close-to-campus bar. They come pre-loaded with thousands of song choices, so why are artists topping hit music charts sometimes nowhere to be found?

It’s because several bars in downtown Madison are filtering popular hip-hop artists out of customers’ reach.

More than a dozen prevalent hip-hop artists—including Drake, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Big Sean, T.I. and Future—have been deleted from the TouchTunes player at Wando’s Bar and Grill on University Avenue.

These artists have hundreds of songs on TouchTunes players at other bars. They’re also nowhere to be found on the TouchTunes players at The Double U and Chasers Bar and Grille.

Owner Jay Wando said he doesn’t want “gangster hip-hop” at Wando’s, a term he didn’t elaborate on, because it might draw in a crowd “not driven by UW-Madison students.”

Wando denied strategically deleting most rap music from his TouchTunes player. When asked what standards he does use when deleting music, Wando responded, “I don’t remember.”

“Every decision I make in this bar is safety-driven. So if that’s dress code, if that’s music, it’s all about safety,” Wando said. “It’s just because we want UW students to be safe in a bar environment.”

Operators of Wando’s and Church Key Bar both agree hiphop is one of the most popular genres for the students. However, the amount of rap artists that can be played via TouchTunes at the two bars is very different.

Thousands of songs by the artists filtered out of the Wando’s

player are available at Church Key Bar—most notably more than 200 each by Lil Wayne, Drake, Rick Ross and 50 Cent.

Armando Acosta, general manager of Church Key, said music could potentially encourage a dangerous bar environment, but that it’s “just one of hundreds of factors.”

“It comes down to your staff, your security, what you allow in your bar, if you allow people to just come in and walk all over you right away,” Acosta said. “All of that plays, not just the music.”

Acosta said that although he stays conscious of what’s playing on the TouchTunes player at Church Key, it’s “nearly one hundred percent unfiltered.”

“I know that I have the authority to go in there and filter down to the bare bones if I wanted to, but why would I want to do that and limit today’s hottest music?” Acosta said.

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Study reveals stigma surrounding suicide

By Sammy Gibbons THE DAILY CARDINAL

MORGAN WINSTON/THE DAILY CARDINAL

UW-Madison’s Department of Gender and Women’s Studies lost a top faculty recruit, a researcher on transgender health care.

Nine percent of UW-Madison students experience suicidal ideation, according to a recent University Health Services report, leading the campus community to raise concerns about stigma surrounding the issue.

Data shows 40 percent of

students surveyed agreed with the statement “most people would think less of someone who has received mental health treatment,” according to The Healthy Minds Study.

The University Health Services study also showed that, of the sampled population of UW-Madison students, nine percent experienced

suicidal ideation in 2015 to 2016. UHS Director of Psychiatric Services Angela Janis said this is a common issue the clinic experiences. She said they have some “predictability” with students reporting suicidal ideation each year, and notice upticks at the beginning of the semester, during exams and, last fall, an increase fol-

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Future of five percent tuition cut in doubt amid divide between Walker, Republican state legislature

By Lilly Price THE DAILY CARDINAL

A key UW-related budget proposal may be in danger, as several Republican lawmakers have voiced opposition to Gov. Scott Walker’s five percent tuition cut proposal for the

state’s public universities.

Walker’s budget proposal featured a tuition freeze for the 2017-18 school year, and a subsequent five percent reduction the following year, covered $35 million in state funds.

However, members of the gover-

nor’s own party could bring the plan down, as some conservatives in the legislature are wary of continuing a hold on tuition.

State Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, co-chairman of the Joint Finance Committee, told the

Wisconsin State Journal Thursday that he is open to scrapping the freeze altogether, saying that to continue the policy is unfeasible.

Opposition from members of the Joint Finance Committee could be lethal to Walker’s pro-

posal, as the committee holds considerable authority over the formulation of the budget.

State Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, also a member of the Joint Finance Committee, expressed certainty in

tuition page 3

“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”

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Monday, April 24, 2017

An independent student newspaper, serving the University of Wisconsin-Madison community since 1892 Volume 126, Issue 53

2142 Vilas Communication Hall 821 University Avenue Madison, Wis., 53706-1497 (608) 262-8000 • fax (608) 262-8100

UW botanist studies extraterrestrial life

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Dear Ms. Scientist, What are gravitational waves?

Mary J.

Jeff Miller/courtesy of UW-Madison

David Baum, an exobiologist in the Department of Botany at UW-Madison, is researching the origins of life on Earth. He is turning his studies to space to better understand those origins.

By Cayla Guerra the daily cardinal

How did we get here? This is one of the most deep-seated questions in the human race. It is also the subject of UW-Madison exobiologist David Baum’s research.

Life must have started at some moment when the “soupy mixture” of chemicals and minerals stopped being random and became alive.

But what does it mean to be alive? According to Baum, one of the major criteria for life is the ability to evolve adaptively. An entity may change randomly, and the environment will respond in one of two ways.

Most likely, the environment will have negative effects on the entity with the changes, and it will die off. Sometimes, however, an entity may have changed in a way better suited to its environment, and that change will persist on through generations.

Baum approaches this field with a unique perspective. Almost everyone studying the origins of life is either a physicist or geologist, but there are very few biologists like Baum. His ideas, however, are providing a necessary paradigm shift about how we think about early life.

“It was clear to me that there was a perspective missing, in particular a perspective about how selection works, and the fact that selection doesn’t need cells, you can have it without cells as a principle,” Baum said.

Baum provided a useful analogy for understanding the idea of selection without cells. Imagine a hypothetical landscape where human populations exist as sectioned-off clans. Each clan is competing with one another for resources, so if a clan

is good at working together, they can get more resources and generate more offspring. Genes from that successful clan will dominate over time.

Now imagine a situation in which every person has a plot of land, and no clans this time. Each person can cooperate with their neighbors, or not. His situation, with no defined clans, still allows for cooperation. The people who cooperate with their neighbors are more successful and can create offspring who will colonize more broadly. In essence, selection is promoting cooperation regardless of whether or not the defined groups of the clan exist.

Baum is expecting to see a type of evolution similar to this analogy in his NASA funded study, aptly named CESPOoL. He hopes to better understand the origin and evolution of surfaceassociated, life-like, interacting molecular ensembles, or SLIMES. “The basic principle is if we take a chemical soup that is rich in energy and the building blocks of potential life … then we can select over many generations for chemical systems that can better propagate themselves,” Baum said.

They will introduce this “chemical soup” to an environment containing grains of minerals that the SLIMES can stick to and grow on. The only way the SLIMES can stay in the environment is by moving from grain to grain, which will allow Baum and his research team to select systems that can grow and adapt well.

This is a very unique way to study the origin of life because the researchers aren’t focusing on one spe-

cific aspect of a cell, such as a membrane or a nucleus.

Instead, they are focusing on the ability to grow and adapt in general. In addition, by including a wide array of possible ingredients from which life could arise, they are speaking to NASA’s interest in how life could exist on other worlds.

“NASA is very interested in the question of what other life might exist in other planetary systems, and they’re also naturally curious as to how we would recognize life if it were somewhere else and looked very different than ours,” Baum said.

NASA works to sterilize spaceships so they do not contaminate other planets with bacteria from our world, Baum explained. They also want to be cognizant of the remote possibility that they may bring something back from another planet. Baum’s research will not only be able to tell us a little bit more about the beginnings of life on our planet but could help hypothesize about the origins of extraterrestrial life as well.

Even if Baum’s experiment doesn’t turn up any SLIMES or life-like organisms, it is clear that bringing the biological perspective into the conversation about the origins of life was beneficial. His model can be replicated by other labs looking to study similar topics and will continue to be useful well after his own team has completed this research.

“Understanding what life would look like elsewhere, and just how likely it is that there is life on maybe Enceladus, or Titan, or some kind and how similar it might be to our life, is something [NASA] really cares about,” Baum said.

About a year ago, the scientific community, and even the general public, was rocked by an amazing discovery—scientists had observed something called gravitational waves. What exactly are they though? Gravitational waves sound like something out of a sci-fi movie. They are basically ripples in the fabric of space time, and they’re created when two huge things— like black holes—crash into each other. Think of it as throwing two pebbles into a pond—together, they create a bigger ripple in the water.

Gravitational waves were first theorized by Albert Einstein back in 1916, and they were a big part of his general theory of relativity, where he proposed that the universe was made of something that could be curved and distorted by objects with mass. In fact, he proposed that gravity resulted from this distortion; that planets orbiting around the sun were like marbles spinning around in circles in a huge funnel. However, until last year, no one could prove Einstein’s theory for sure. It was a momentous discovery that gave the last puzzle piece for one of his most important theories.

Dear Ms. Scientist, Why can’t I use water on a grease fire?

Edward O. For a college student millennial that can’t cook, a grease fire is probably a familiar experience. It can happen when you leave the butter in the pan too long.

When it comes to a grease fire, forget everything you’ve learned and don’t put it out with water! The chemical compound that makes up grease is lighter than water, so the grease will float on top of the water and continue to burn. Because burning grease is extremely hot, it will also cause the water to rapidly evaporate. This rapidly evaporating water will cause the grease to splatter, spreading the fire. Instead, use baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, which creates carbon dioxide that can displace the oxygen fueling the fire, thus extinguishing the flames.

Ask Ms. Scientist is written by Maggie Liu and Jordan Gaal.

Burning science question? science@dailycardinal.com.

news

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Monday, April 24, 2017 • 3

ASM divestment fallout: Internal lawsuits erupt

By Nina Bertelsen THE DAILY CARDINAL

Three times this week Associated Students of Madison representatives brought cases against their own Student Council surrounding controversial divestment legislation and a subsequent bylaws change.

Case One—Rep. Stephen Chen and Shared Governance Chair Omer Arain alleged Council violated open records and open meetings laws. They asked to void events of the March 29th meeting, including a vote to indefinitely table divestment legislation.

The judiciary issued a summary judgement finding for two petitioners’ allegations. Their decision mandates two bylaws changes and an apology for minute inaccuracies.

Case Two—Grant Allocation Chair Ariela Rivkin, a Jewish student, filed a suit against Council alleging malicious intent and discrimination of the Jewish community.

After divestment was tabled, the authors proposed to add a new committee devoted to financial transpar-

ency. Rep. Glen Water, who introduced the bylaws change, said the authors took input from many campus groups but did not receive a final reply from Rivkin before introducing

the proposal at the April 12th meeting—on Passover.

However, prior to the meeting, Rivkin had asked leaders to refrain from debating any proposal

Thousands march on Earth Day as part of worldwide rally for environment, science

CARLIE LAMKE/THE DAILY CARDINAL

Thousands from the Madison community participated in environmental rallies on Earth Day.

By Gina Heeb THE DAILY CARDINAL

Joining an international movement advocating for climate science, an estimated 2,500 people from the Madison community marched to the city’s main electric company on Earth Day to raise awareness about environmental protection policies and programs they feel are in jeopardy at both the local and national level.

The Madison Climate March is one of hundreds of protests involving the environment taking place across the world today and next weekend, about a month after the first federal budget proposal under President Donald Trump— which would cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency

tuition from page 1 the item’s demise in the legislature, suggesting widespread disillusionment from Republican lawmakers toward the governor’s out-of-character increase in planned spending.

However, with elections coming up in 2018, many Republicans have their eyes on public opinion.

“There have been no reforms adopted in the UW System that would justify eliminating the resident tuition freeze and the public supports the five percent tuition cut,” said state Sen. Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater, in a press release. “The choice

by 31 percent—was released.

“In that face of one the most hostile administrations that this state, this nation and Mother Earth have known, we can take heart in knowing that the history that we represent is bigger than that,” said Tony Schultz, who owns an organic farm in central Wisconsin.

Participants gathered on the state Capitol lawn to listen to several advocates speak before making their way to Madison Gas and Electric to picket for clean energy.

MGE shareholder Beth Esser told the crowd that the threat of climate change made her re-evaluate her investments.

“Despite their solar pilot projects, their electric-vehicle charging is clear, each legislator can stand with Wisconsin’s middle class families or they can stand with the all talk, no action UW System leadership.”

UW officials have expressed a desire for lawmakers to end the freeze, and empower the Board of Regents to oversee tuition issues instead.

UW System President Ray Cross told the Joint Finance Committee that he would rather the funds going to the tuition cut be appropriated for needs-based financial aid, a popular alternative among members of the committee.

stations and their green ads, MGE has continued to rely on fossil fuels for 88 percent of their electric generation,” Esser said.

Filling the street outside of MGE, the crowd shouted chants including, “no more coal, no more oil, we don’t want our earth to boil,” while a group of people congregated in a line to spell out “justice.”

Thousands of others participated in a related Madison rally, the March for Science, which took place the same day.

The Madison Police Department did not report any issues.

Sammy Gibbons, Claire Lancaster, Maggie Chandler, Téalin Robinson and Lulu de Vogel contributed to this report.

suicide from page 1 lowing the presidential election.

The stigma may prevent minority populations of people from obtaining mental health assistance, though students of color have a higher rate of depression than white students, according to Janis. Data collected by UHS showed there were 22,315 student visits to UHS mental health services in the 2015-’16 academic year— 15,210 of those students identified as white, while all other ethnic groups ranked below 3,000.

“Sometimes, depending on people’s cultural or personal back-

bylaws change discriminating, but Council members voted to have the first vote on change at that meeting—a break from due process that dictates an introduction and two votes all at separate meetings—expediting the process and causing further harm.

Student Judiciary voted to uphold an injunction against any further discussion of the bylaws change until an official hearing. Proponents of the legislation argued this would prevent a vote from ever happening as the 23rd session comes to a close next week.

Case Three—Goséy and Morrison filed a case against Student Council alleging discrimination of them as black women. They specifically cite Rivkin as singling them out in her petition and not bylawscosponsor Rep. Devin JudgeLord—a white man. They cite GRAPHIC BY THEDA BERRY/THE DAILY CARDINAL numerous cases of alleged related to the sensitive issue while attempts to silence them and Jewish students were away for reli- smear their character. gious observance.

Cases two and three await filing Her complaint alleges that not of petitioner and respondent’s briefs only was the introduction of the before a Student Judiciary’s hearing.

professor from page 1 supported him and his research.

“I feel like we could have protected him from political winds,” Houck said. “Whether I’m right in that, I don’t know but I think that’s the case.”

Houck, who has been chair of the GWS department for four years, said this case was an exception, as a rejection due to political reasons isn’t common. Still, UW-Madison spokesperson Meredith McGlone said the university recognizes that the state’s “support for higher education, both in policies and funding, is top of mind for our faculty.”

McGlone said UW-Madison has attempted to address these issues through a sustained campaign for reinvestment in the university, by reaching out to state residents

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“about the value of the university and strong retention packages of research support for faculty who receive outside offers.”

Even though the GWS department lost their first choice due to political reasons, Houck said she is thrilled with who eventually accepted the position.

“We are over the moon, we are thrilled with whom we have,” Houck said. “I don’t consider it a loss, we just had the opportunity to hire somebody else who was also great.”

Houck asserted that the “assaults on tenure” were probably also part of the professor’s decision to decline the offer. She said many candidates asked if UW-Madison even still had tenure.

She would tell them that the university does have tenure, but that it doesn’t “look exactly like it used to.”

Customers who come to Church Key from Double U have pointed out disparities in music selection, he said.

“People will come in here either from Double U or walking by Double U and they’ll try to play songs with the phone app and say we don’t have songs we actually do,” Acosta. “They can’t find them because they’re still on Double U’s TouchTunes.”

Double U and Chasers have less hip-hop songs on their TouchTunes players than Wando’s.

The two bars, both owned and operated by the same family, have together filtered more than a dozen and a half prevalent hip-hop artists out of their TouchTunes selections.

They kept some artists Wando’s had deleted, but often had no more than a few songs for each—a stark contrast from hundreds available at Church Key. Double U owner Bill Rudy did not respond to multiple interview requests. Chase Rudy, owner of Chaser’s, declined to comment.

ground, they may have grown up in a place where it was less acceptable to obtain mental health care,” Janis said. “[UHS] wants to show the student population that everybody is welcome here and we take it very seriously to train and educate our staff to be as open, sensitive and aware of all the things going on that we can be.”

Janis said UHS is attempting to “bridge that gap” by increasing outreach programming to those populations on campus. One way is through Let’s Talk drop in sessions, where students can stop by at their convenience and discuss their issues with a UHS counselor. Those sessions are held at the Multicultural Student

Center as well as other locations.

UHS has also moved some counselors from the seventh floor mental health floor to primary care on the fifth floor in order to make services more accessible for students who worry about the stigma they fear may come with a visit to the upper level.

Student organizations also advocate for fighting the stigma surrounding mental health. The suicide prevention group Ask.Listen.Save. hosted a march from Sellery Residence Hall down Lakeshore Path Sunday.

More than 300 attendees walked to raise awareness about suicide and start an alternative conversation to end the stigma.

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The Flaming Lips fuse psych pop with classic rock in impressive set

By Leah Voskuil THE DAILY CARDINAL

The Flaming Lips stopped by the Orpheum Theater Saturday night while on the Midwest leg of their current world tour and, yes, they brought a unicorn.

A group that emerged out of Oklahoma in the early 1980s, The Flaming Lips have become the poster-children for psychedelic experimentalism in the modern age—think Pink Floyd meets A$AP Rocky with a dash of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” This is not a joke and, unsurprisingly, their show was equally as mind-bending as it was inspirational.

Los Angeles noise rock trio Cherry Glazerr opened for The Flaming Lips to a surprisingly calm crowd. With a relatively large social media following and an incredibly successful career fostered by SoundCloud co-founder Sean Borman, Cherry Glazerr achieved fame at a legitimately early age—as in, still in high school. There was interest, but it was around the third song when the crowd started headbanging almost as hard as Saint Laurent muse and Cherry Glazerr’s frontwoman Clementine Creevy. It must be hard to command a stage when the audience can see giant balloons and confetti barricaded behind you, but Cherry Glazerr

did just fine.

Once the wait was over, Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne and his colossal moneysign necklace were ready to take the audience on the (acid) trip of a lifetime, as presented in their newest album, Oczy Mlody— translated from Polish to mean “Eyes of the Young.”

Just as the album presents a story of a drug that makes people dream of unicorns, what the Lips presented was more than a concert; it was a true spectacle. With light-strings hanging from the ceiling, glowing like Christmas time, Coyne and bandmates were part of the art they were creating.

With each transitional period, the audience eagerly awaited to see what was going to happen next. First, there were giant balloons and enough confetti for a parade. For another song, Coyne rode through the crowd on a unicorn that lit up. Yes, you read that correctly. There was even a point where he was in a human hamster ball and relied on fans to pass him around the venue. Who would have thought that a time would come when crowd-surfing was obsolete?

It needs to be said that more than half of the charm that goes into the Lips’ current show stems from the stagehands and lighting technicians that have brought

MORGAN WINSTON/THE DAILY CARDINAL

The Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne performed a mind-bending set at the Orpheum on Saturday. such an abstract concept to life.

An album, concert and band like The Flaming Lips demand flawless synchronization, and their current crew surely delivers.

Though The Flaming Lips took an atypical approach to their stage presence, they are an embodiment of rock traditionalism. If there is one aspect of this concert that was even more

obvious than the 30-foot blowup rainbow on stage, it was their stance that an album should not be a list of singles, but rather an experience to be played in full from beginning to end. The Flaming Lips require a level of interactivity and cohesion with their audience in order to maximize the true potential of their art. They may be the faces of

experimental psych pop, but the Lips are traditional at heart.

Essentially, whether this was someone’s seventh Flaming Lips concert or they stumbled in by chance, the levels of creativity and freeness were so breathtaking that it was nearly impossible to not log the experience as one of the best concerts Madison has seen in a few years.

Batuman’s ‘Idiot’ updates Dostoevsky for millennial era

By Lucas Sczygelski THE DAILY CARDINAL

Conor Oberst, the mascaraed Bright Eyes frontman, has a verse on his new album, Ruminations, about life under Ronald Reagan.

True, Reagan doesn’t seem so bad now, but at the time he seemed like a bad joke. “Reagan flexes his worn, snipped, tucked, mottled face,” wrote Martin Amis in 1979.

“He would make a good head waiter, a good Butlins redcoat, a good host for ‘New Faces.’ But would he make a good leader of the free world?”

Apparently not, according to Oberst. Singing in his simpering nasal wobble, Oberst tells how he dealt with Reagan. “It’s

a little uncanny / What he managed to do / Got me to read those Russian authors through and through.”

There’s something about baggy Russian novels that beg to be read in times of confusion. It could be the heady, difficult names of the authors themselves: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Gogol.

It could be the old cliché about the “Russian Soul.” Or it could be, as Vladimir Nabokov wrote, that Russian literature somehow evokes a “peculiar landscape, a special atmosphere, a symbol, a long, long road.”

For whatever reason, the honesty and depth resonates. Unfortunately, it’s not really being written anymore. Some say Stalin’s gulags killed it while others simply concede that the era is gone. If Elif Batuman has her way, it’s not dead yet. She is the author of the new novel, “The Idiot,” and a New Yorker staff writer. It is her first novel, having published a compilation of autobiographical essays on Russian literature, “The Possessed,” in 2010.

If you’re versed in Russian lit, you’ll be able to tell that the two titles are borrowed from Dostoevsky. “The Possessed” is an alternate translation for “Demons,” a novel on political

nihilism, and “The Idiot” is, well, borrowed from a book of the same title.

Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” follows Prince Myshkin as he returns to Russia from a stay at a Swiss sanatorium to collect an inheritance. As the title infers, Myshkin is an idiot, but not for lack of intellect. Instead, the prince is extremely naïve and almost childlike, so you don’t know whether to love him or pity him.

In Petersburg, where most of the novel takes place, Myshkin socializes with a wealthy set that he meets on characteristically innocent terms. He arrives in the city, unfashionable coat slouching off his gaunt frame, and knocks on the door of distant relatives he’s never met. Before being thrown out, he enchants the family with his excellent penmanship and an impetuous observation about a woman he’s only just met. “About your face I not only think but I’m certain that you are a perfect child, in everything, in everything, in everything good and in everything bad, despite your age,” the prince says. Yes, Myshkin is quite naïve and he pays for it in the tangle of envy and deception he’s unwittingly talked himself into.

Batuman’s new idiot is similarly wide-eyed, and in a way that we all know well: She’s a college freshman. Selin is the 18-yearold daughter of secular Turkish immigrants attending Harvard University in 1995–credentials Batuman shares. Writing for

n+1 Magazine in 2006, Batuman made it clear that unlike some writers, she’s not afraid to plum the grottos of her past for fiction.

“American novelists are ashamed to find their own lives interesting; all the rooms in the house have become haunted, the available subjects have been blocked off. What remains to be written about? (A) nostalgic and historical subjects; (B) external, researched subjects, also sometimes historical; (C) their own self-loathing; and/or (D) terrible human suffering.”

Well, I suppose we shouldn’t expect the next great Holocaust novel from Batuman. Dostoevsky flashed autobiographical at times too in his “The Idiot.” Soon after arriving in Petersburg, Myshkin chats with an uncomfortable doorman about an execution he recently witnessed in Paris.

“The whole torment lies in the certainty that there’s no escape,” he says. But then he muses, what if “He’s been allowed to suffer, and has been told, ‘Go you’re forgiven.’ That man might be able to tell us something.” As a young man, Dostoevsky received a similar last-second reprieve from execution along with his radical “co-conspirators.” He served a stint in Siberia instead.

Batuman’s past isn’t as gothic as Dostoevsky’s, but that doesn’t make her “The Idiot” any less piercing. Selin too is able to elicit blanched turns of pity, love and grimace. As she checks in for freshman orientation she’s handed an Ethernet cable for her dorm

room. She turns to a girl beside her and says, “What do we do with this, hang ourselves?” Yes, her joke is very lame, and there’s more that follows.

And that’s before she falls in love with Ivan, a seven-foot tall Hungarian grad student. Being 1995, they come together over the hot, new medium: email.

Complete sentences, prefaced with “Dear Ivan’s” and “Dear Selin’s.” She writes stuff to him like, “Your message wasn’t easy for me to understand. I guess I’m too used to thinking of words as a means to an end … I send you an email: how do you know who wrote it? It could be anyone.”

No, that’s not the way most of us do it. But Selin is odd. She’s just more comfortable explicating the relationship from behind a computer screen. She later follows Ivan to Hungary for the summer, in a trip that mirrors Prince Myshkin’s Petersburg adventure in its candid tumult.

Sure, most of Selin’s mishaps seem laughably ephemeral when set next to Dostoevsky’s version of “The Idiot”—passive-aggressive fights over dorm room posters, heartbreak, trouble in lit class—but Batuman occasionally overwhelms with heavy Russian strokes of honesty, with spine-tingling shivers that betray her intellectual lineage.

She turns a mirror on our own college idiocy, and for that, it’s worth picking up.

Have you read “The Idiot?” What did you think? Let Lucas know by emailing arts@dailycardinal.com.

comics

Monday, April 24, 2017 • 5

dailycardinal.com

Today’s Crossword Puzzle

Gorillas burp when they are happy.

Today’s Sudoku

© Puzzles by Pappocom

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

ACROSS 1 Maryland crustacean 5 Bid alternative 9 Crisp, thin cookie 14 Emulate Jake Arrieta 15 Australian gemstone 16 Good relations 17 Ingredient in many cosmetics 18 Italian evening 19 VP Mike 20 Sis 23 Muse of poetry 24 Wino 25 Ease off, as a tide 28 One attempting to earn badges 32 Capital of South Dakota 34 Old-school commotion 37 Render void 39 Ornamental notions case 40 Causing a certain NBA violation 44 Word after “look” or “ran”

45 Butcher’s leftover mess 46 “The Raven” author 47 Relative of a donkey or zebra 50 Play matchmaker 52 ___ Antonio 53 Picnic pest 55 7:1, e.g.

59 Taking apart 64 Fowl pole?

66 “Before I let you go ...”

67 Victimized Genesis brother 68 Reproductive egg cell 69 All eyes and ears 70 Thing in the trunk 71 Something you can’t live without 72 Eyelid inflammation 73 What a person does daily DOWN 1 Make irritated by rubbing 2 Common bookbag item 3 Indication that coffee is

brewing 4 Some barnyard noises 5 Be a model 6 Jungle primates 7 Indian dress 8 Big hunks 9 American elk 10 Church cry 11 It’s printed?

12 “And more” 13 Whiskey order 21 Anything in one’s hometown 22 Slice off, as a branch 26 Musical Mars 27 A neutral tone 29 “Single” digit 30 Completely reverse 31 Territories, to gang members 33 Migratory skinny fish 34 “Hasta luego” 35 Prima ___ 36 Utter, as a double-play?

38 It’s preferred over death

41 Cranberry’s maturing site 42 Dracula, in another form 43 Dust jacket plug 48 Resurrection Day 49 Genetic inits.

51 A foodie may cleanse it 54 Old Russian monarchs 56 Bone in the leg 57 Like krypton and some other gases 58 Admires beach bodies 60 Stereotypical place to be stranded 61 Thin wood strip 62 See from afar 63 Speck of dust, e.g.

64 Column crosser 65 Scientific eggs

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opinion 6

l

Monday, April 24, 2017

dailycardinal.com

Social media should play a less significant role in search for job candidates MADISON SCHULTZ opinion columnist

PHOTO COURTESY OF CREATIVE COMMONS-MATT WADE

A recent bill would make it easier for employers to discriminate based on family medical history.

Proliferation of genetic testing could threaten constitutional freedoms HAE RIN LEE opinion columnist

Earlier this year, I took a genetic test to find out more about my ancestry and physical conditions. I have learned more than I expected as I discovered, surprisingly, that I was lactoseintolerant, but more ethnically diverse than I assumed. I also learned about how likely I am to develop certain health conditions. It was amazing for me to realize what a simple sample could tell me about myself.

There are many positives and negatives to knowing this much about one’s genetic information.

In April of this year, there were several headlines in major media outlets reporting that the FDA would allow 23andMe, a major genetic testing company, to sell genetic tests for disease risk directly to consumers. According to a New York Times article on April 6, 2017, with FDA approval, the company would be allowed to offer options for customers to test for the hereditary likelihood of developing certain health conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s when they purchase the $199 Ancestry and Health report kit. Now it has become easier for people like me to receive genetic tests to see the potential risk for certain health conditions without having to see a medical professional. While one part of me sees the benefits of such a test, another part of me is wary of the potential downsides of such a practice. These may require us to be more cautious of its use.

Our society has not yet reached the epitome of genetic misuse in that there is a federal law protecting the genetic information of individuals. According to the National Human Genome and Research Institute, there is a federal law called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, which intends to protect Americans from being treated

unfairly because of differences in their DNA that may affect their health. It aims to protect people from being discriminated by the health insurers and employers for their genetic information.

This makes it illegal for insurance companies to require you to take genetic tests, request family medical history or deny your eligibility and premiums for the pre-existing conditions based on hereditary likelihood. The existence of this law indicates that there really are cases where people are treated unfairly for circumstances beyond their control.

There was a case when GINA played a part in helping to protect people with certain genetic conditions or family medical histories from employment discrimination. In 2014, a nursing home was charged for requesting family medical history as part of its postoffer, pre-employment medical exams of applicants. This is one example of how the act protected people from being abused for their hereditary conditions, and very much proves that there needs to be a baseline protection for people as genetic testing becomes more of a marketable information rather than secretive personal data.

But what concerned me most as I read the headlines of allowing the genetic testing industries to be more marketable and commercial was that about a month ago there was a bill introduced in the House of Representatives that would potentially weaken the power of protection imposed by the GINA law. An article in March 2017 by The New York Times reported that the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., would allow employers to access the personal medical and genetic information of employees and raise financial penalties for those who opt out of workplace wellness programs.

This means that companies can force their employees to undergo

health screenings or genetic tests, which could contain information about not only themselves, but also their families and children.

Letting employers have access to such sensitive information and enforcing financial penalties would naturally push people to take these tests against their will, hardly making it an option. This bill is under review by the House Committee and has not yet been considered by the Senate, but the mere introduction of such a bill and the FDA’s choice to allow genetic testing to be a viable consumer choice may make genetic-based discrimination a reality.

However good-intentioned this bill may have been is a question for later discussion. As of now, the increasing accessibility of genetic testing for both public and private sectors and the fact that there is a bill to make the genetic information of individuals public is a frightening prospect. I don’t neglect the obvious benefit of widespread genetic testing, but as someone who received worrying test results, I am concerned that I may one day fall victim to such discrimination.

Many things hidden in private are publicized for the sake of protection and regulation, but this trend seriously limits personal freedom, a constitutional ideal of this country, and makes me wonder if it’s worth the risk. We all are different, and if society cannot embrace such diversity, then there is a no reason to call such an institution democratic. Allowing genetic testing to be more marketable is not a thing that I deny to be beneficial, but I want it to be protected from public misuse. I believe we have a right to know a lot of things, but the liberty of knowledge should not be turned into a freedom to oppress us.

Hae Rin is a junior majoring in history. How do you feel about the spread of genetic testing? Please send all comments, questions and concerns to opinion@dailycardinal.com.

Nowadays, one of the requirements for finding a job, especially out of college, seems to be maintaining a social media presence and paying attention to how you present yourself on social media. I know many people who have separate Facebook accounts: one with their real name that potential employers can easily look up, where they make sure they are maintaining an appropriate, professional profile, and another account where they use a nickname and are more open for their own personal enjoyment. LinkedIn has also become increasingly popular, seemingly out of nowhere, and has become another platform college students feel obligated to join. But not everyone has all these forms of social media, and that should not put them at a disadvantage when applying for jobs. Maintaining an active social media profile should not be an employer’s main concern when looking for job candidates. The way a person presents themselves in person and the relevant past experience they can demonstrate on a resume is, in my opinion, far more important.

First of all, social media presence does not necessarily reflect one’s work ethic and skill set, yet many employers try and search for prospective employees on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Everyone has a private life, and they should not have to be obligated to share this information in their professional life.

People are not one-dimensional and everyone is going to have a different “persona” when they are at work versus when they are with their family or friends. There needs to be a clearer separation between one’s social life and one’s work life, which tend to be intrinsically pretty separate for most people.

Additionally, I do not believe that LinkedIn is really as useful as the hype surrounding it purports it to be. I do not know anyone personally who has gotten a job because of their LinkedIn profile. I went to a club meeting once where a professional in a communications career talked about her experiences, and when asked about LinkedIn, she felt that it was honestly not that useful and she only made one because everyone else

makes one. LinkedIn seems to be a thing people do just because others do it, but gain no real benefit from using it. Information on a resume from past job experiences and references can give employers a more useful idea of an employee’s job history and experience.

Everyone has a private life, and they should not be obligated to share this information in their professional life.

I also know plenty of people who do not have any form of social media. This is a personal choice and should not limit their prospects of finding a job. Not everyone wants to put their personal information and pictures out on the Internet where, even though there are privacy settings, anyone could end up seeing them. There’s no reason why companies should find it odd or concerning that a potential employee does not have a social media profile if their resume clearly demonstrates their competence for the job. People post personal things on their social media profiles, related to political beliefs, ideologies and other topics they feel strongly about. If the person doing the hiring browses through a potential employee’s profile and does not agree with certain beliefs he sees the potential employee voicing, he could become biased against hiring the person. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, which are not related to how good of an employee they will be.

Essentially, I feel that the importance of social media presence in helping to find a job has been way overblown. Employers need to respect the privacy of people they are hiring and understand that there is a difference between one’s social and professional life. The way a person represents themselves in person will tell an employer much more about who they are as a person and help them to determine if they will be the right fit for the company.

Madison is a sophomore majoring in English and communication arts. Please send all comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com.

CAMERON LANE-FLEHINGER/THE DAILY CARDINAL

Many students turn to LinkedIn to connect with employers.

dailycardinal.com

Monday, April 24, 2017

Nowhere

by Alexandra Pleasant This the third and final installment of our ongoing mystery series. In the second installment of “Nowhere,” Hannah runs to Cade’s apartment after Levi says that Cade was not with them when they walked on the lake the night before. While in the apartment, Cade’s voice speaks to her and tells her to find Levi and take him to the lake.

Chapter the Third: Now Here ...The call from Cade bursts into static.“Hannah,” I hear his voice again, not over the static, but over the train barreling toward the crossing

by Union South.

I look across the train tracks.

Cade’s standing there, staring at me.

“Cade!” I scream, but the train cuts in front of me before I can cross the tracks.

When the train passes, he’s gone.

What was it he tried to tell me to do? How will I save him? Get Levi, I think, the lake.

I cross the tracks, but there’s nothing left of Cade. He’s nowhere. No, what did he say, not nowhere—Now Here. I think of the memory of him sitting in his apartment, how he was there and there again, a loop, stuck in the same moment. The memory wasn’t repeated, it was relived.

“Now Here,” I think of him saying.

Here. He doesn’t mean a place, he means a time.

It’s late, maybe midnight, closer to one. I cross Dayton, cutting through the empty intersections onto Johnson.

I’m going back to the lake, back to where Cade went through the ice.

I call Levi, it’s late, but I know he’s still awake—he can never sleep when he’s upset. The call rings then is answered with a dull silence and Levi’s tired voice, “Hannah?” he says.

What was it he tried to tell me to do? How will I save him?

“Levi, I know where Cade is,” I say.

“He’s in the lake.”

“What are you talking about? Did the police say something to—” “No Levi, the police are wrong.

He’s trapped in the lake. He was … he still is. We have to help.” I can’t explain completely, but I need Levi to trust me. He doesn’t.

“Some of us are trying to help, and I don’t know where you’ve been all day, but it hasn’t been helping

Hannah! When the police were asking questions, when the divers were in the lake, while I was there thinking Cade was dead—” “Levi, I need your help—” There’s a long pause over the line. “Cade needs your help.” I say. “Meet me by the lake,” I say with finality and try to hang up.

He tries to say my name in clear frustration as the call cuts him off.

I turn down Park Street. The yellow police tape flutters slightly in the wind coming off the lake, bright yellow against the dark sheen of the now-open water. Memorial Union Theater remains illuminated. Its four vertical bars casting the shallow water awash in the soft, yellow glow.

The lake reflects stray beams of light in oranges, yellows and bright reds. I duck under the police tape and stand at the water’s edge beyond the terrace.

I stop and stare out at the water. I don’t know what I’m doing here.

The lights of the union behind me flare and flicker then suddenly burst as the figure disappears.

I thought that I’d know what to do once I got here, that I would be struck with a revelation, a set of guiding instructions, but I’m not. I’m confused and cold and standing empty-handed with no way to help. I try to suppress the swelling feeling in my stomach that I can’t help and that I had lied to Cade. He trusted me; he had been completely, unflinchingly honest, and I promised more than I could do.

I stare at the water. I close my eyes.

“Hold on,” I say. It’s what I had said when I saw him looped in my memory, what I had said when I walked him home. And I mean it.

“Hold on,” I say again.

“Hannah,” Cade says in that distant waterlogged way that I heard him in my memory. I open my eyes and see a figure standing on the end of the Goodspeed pier. The lights of the union behind me flare and flicker then suddenly burst as the figure disappears. Cade.

I run to the end of the pier, and stare into the dark water. “Cade!” I say. The wind coming off the lake is stronger. In the deafening howl of it I hear a low, unsteady voice.

“Hannah,” I say. I close my eyes. I think I hear a cracking sound: thin ice.

I remember the way Cade yelled last night, and then went silent. The

Flashing Lights

by Eliza Weisberg

Your lips were the color of lilacs when you told me we met in the summer I dont remember when you said we fell in love

-those were the next lyrics in the song But i pretended that you said right away Now i cant look at lilacs anymore Because all i see is your lips

dark glare of open water against the thick, white ice. The moment plays over and over in my mind, just like that other memory of Cade, not repeated, re-lived. He’s in a loop of time, the same moment—him falling in the lake—over and over again.

“Hannah!” I hear in his distant voice, “Where’s Levi?” I can’t answer.

I don’t know, Levi doesn’t trust me like Cade does. I don’t know where Levi is, I don’t know if he is going to come help me. “Need Levi!” Cade’s voice sounds frantic, “Need light!”

“I—” I stutter, I don’t know what to say.

I remember Cade, face upturned, eyes wide and terrified, fists clenched against the cold and his body slowly marbling a waterlogged blue, gently sinking.

“Hannah!” Someone yells. It’s not Cade; it’s Levi. I open my eyes and see him running past the union theater toward the pier. He is here, either because he trusted me or he didn’t, but it doesn’t matter. He’s here.

I look back to the water just beyond the pier. There’s a light, white and hazy, somewhere deep below the surface, and Cade’s there. I see him, eyes wide and terrified, in the lake. “Now Here,” I hear Cade say in the wind. I turn to see Levi running down the pier. “Now Here,” Cade says. He means Now. I turn and dive into the frigid water.

I swim down toward the white light I saw glowing there. As I get closer, everything’s pulled harder into focus. Cade’s here, floating just as I had seen him before, against the White Wall as he called it. The sound of footsteps crunch on the other side of the barrier, two maybe three sets.

I come up beside Cade and press my hand against the barrier; it’s ice. It’s the ice of the lake. Cade’s under the ice and now I am too.

Cade’s here, floating just as I had seen him before, against the White Wall as he called it.

The footsteps sound again. “It’s us,” Cade says, “We’re here again.

Now here.”

When we were on the ice, it was Cade underneath. The pounding above the ice was Cade, and that response, that pounding from beneath, was Cade too. He’s been here stuck in this moment, both sides of the ice, watching the scene play out again and again. Multiple timelines,

converging on this event.

Maybe that was it, why Levi thought Cade wasn’t on the ice. I was in a timeline where Cade was on the ice, and Levi was in a timeline where Cade was beneath the ice; this moment simultaneously existing in both.

A burst of white light spreads, enveloping the three of us, then suddenly goes black.

From the above side of the ice, Cade and I hear the pounding. We frantically beat on the ice. The other side illuminates; that’s when Levi and I pulled out the flashlights on our phones. We hit the ice more frantically. Need Light, Need Levi.

Suddenly, Levi comes up beside us. He must have followed me into the lake, diving and swimming toward us. He presses his hands to the ice, and a burst of white light spreads, enveloping the three of us, then goes suddenly black.

Cade, Levi and myself stay in that black moment for what feels like forever, but slowly light starts to edge its way through. First small, shimmering pinpricks, then the signature four vertical bars of light on the union theater and their reflection on the ice.

We’re on the ice again, as we were last night, exactly as if all the events of tomorrow haven’t even happened yet. Levi looks baffled, but he understands now. “Cade!” he says.

Levi helps him up, then me. He looks urgently around, like he knows something we don’t. “We have to get off the lake,” he says and we take off running, all three of us close together.

We hear a cracking sound. Thin ice.

Levi knows about it, knows that’s how Cade got trapped in the lake. He grabs Cade’s arm and pulls him sharply back from the edge of the ice, safely keeping him from the open water, safely keeping him from the lake.

We look at him in disbelief. This is where the loop is broken; this moment isn’t re-lived because Levi stopped it from ever happening. Levi saved Cade. “Cade wasn’t there.”

What are your thoughts on the story? Did you like it? Would you like to see more stories like this in the future? Would you be interested in writing a story or know anyone that would be? Send us an email at almanac@dailycardinal.com.

respiration

by Eliza Weisberg The thing is- a really awful thing happened, but listening to the way air moves through your lungs as I lay on your chest makes everything still for a moment.

I would rather listen to the blood move through your veins than do most things.

My time is yours even when it’s not.

-maybe that’s tragedy; I don’t know.

Maybe it’s tragedy to think that I don’t want to think about what happened; but I do want to remember your lips.

And the way they felt on mine before they were bruised.

l

almanac

7

Sports

MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2017 DAILYCARDINAL.COM

Football

Southpaw QB must nail down timing on throws CAMERON LANE-FLEHINGER/CARDINAL FILE PHOTO

Hayes became a star both on and off the court in his four years.

Rasty’s farewell: Nigel Hayes did it all during time at UW

MORGAN WINSTON/CARDINAL FILE PHOTO

Alex Hornibrook will be the starter under center next year for UW, but still has plenty to work on.

By Lorin Cox THE DAILY CARDINAL

The Wisconsin Badgers have their starting quarterback firmly entrenched this spring—a luxury that’s been difficult to come by in recent years.

All eyes have been on the competition behind Alex Hornibrook, but as a result, the redshirt sophomore’s development seems to have been overlooked in the process.

Hornibrook was among the starters who sat out of Friday night’s Spring Game, but over the course of all 15 spring practices, it was apparent that the third-year lefty remains largely the same quarterback he was last season, for better and for worse.

The biggest, visible difference is his confidence. Hornibrook was named the starter back on March 13, and he acts like it. He’s more decisive in the pocket, and he’s clearly taken a bigger leadership role within the offense because he’s now the most experienced QB they’ve got.

“Now that I’m the oldest guy in the room, it’s a different feel in the quarterback room every day,” Hornibrook said. “The big thing for me was just kind of applying what I was working on in the offseason, be it the offense, the reads, pocket movements, and I saw some improvements there.”

The intangible development is certainly a welcome sight for this coaching staff and roster, but when the ball is in his hands and the plays are live, Hornibrook still displays most of the same weaknesses that held him Hornibrook back in 2016. in 2016 ...

It’s no secret that his arm lacks velocity. touchdowns That’s not going to change, but that’s also not interceptions an issue, in a vacuum. You don’t have to completion have a cannon rate attached to your shoulder to play quarterback at yards per a high level, but pass you do need to

8 7 58% 6.9

have anticipation and timing— Even his worst throws are rarely two areas Hornibrook continues a bad decision with the ball. It’s to struggle to develop. the execution and timing of the Even as a redshirt freshman throw that needs improvement, last year, he was far superior to co- and the only way to develop this starter Bart Houston in his ability aspect is with experience. to read coverages and make smart “I’ll take time to get all of the decisions with the football. That, plays that I ran this spring, and combined with Hornibrook’s consistent footwork and improving pocket presence, left the young quarterback with a very bright future.

The issue is, he’s still late with the ball far too often on throws at practice. The vast majority of the time when his throws are broken up or even intercepted, it’s because he didn’t get the ball out soon enough.

If he had a stronger arm, it would make up for the extra second he waited to get the pass off, but because Hornibrook has to get a little bit more air under his GAGE MEYER/CARDINAL FILE PHOTO throws downfield, it gives Without a cannon for an arm, Alex Hornibrook’s defenders just timing and precision must be better in the fall. enough time to get in position to make a play on look at those and see places that the ball.

I can improve on that I wouldn’t If Hornibrook could better antici- really be looking into that much pate the receiver getting open, he every single day,” Hornibrook could release the ball a second ear- said. “Just taking something that lier and the velocity wouldn’t be an I can grow on from the spring and issue. A stronger arm would help applying it for the summer.” solve the problem, but his lack of The offseason is the time to arm strength isn’t causing the issue. identify and improve on the weakThis is what held him back in nesses in his game. Hornibrook 2016, and he needs to continue to knows he still has work to do, grow in this area if he wants to even with the starting quartertake his game to the next level. back job already locked in place.

ZACH RASTALL make it Rasty Usually in these farewell columns, I think I’m supposed to leave you all with some parting words of wisdom from my experience in Madison or something like that. But I have nothing earth-shattering to offer that you haven’t heard before, so I won’t bore anyone with that.

Instead, I’d like to take this final opportunity to say farewell to a different senior departing UW–Madison.

Last month, we saw Nigel Hayes suit up in a Wisconsin uniform for the final time, bringing an end to his remarkable and memorable four-year career as a Badger. On the court, he had one of the most prolific careers of any player in program history.

Hayes played in every single one of Wisconsin’s 150 games over the last four years, the most in school history. He finished tied for fourth in school history in starts (112), third behind Alando Tucker and Michael Finley in points (1,857), sixth in rebounds (802), seventh in assists (319) and second to only Josh Gasser in wins (115).

Though his shot development was a source of criticism for some fans over the years, he was still an incredibly well-rounded player who brought so much to the table. He was a versatile and solid defender, a gifted passer with excellent court vision (seriously, watching him and Ethan Happ carve up a zone defense was a thing of beauty) and could be a force to be reckoned with in the post on offense, as Villanova learned this past March.

Of course, he also had a wide range of roles to play throughout perhaps the best four-year stretch in Wisconsin basketball history. As a freshman, Hayes came in as the most important bench player during the first of two consecutive Final Four runs.

During his sophomore season, he joined Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker to make up one of the most formidable starting frontcourts in all of college basketball. And over the past two years, he and Bronson Koenig filled the roles of veteran leaders to help Wisconsin make a smooth transition from Bo Ryan

to Greg Gard.

It’s been an incredible last four seasons for Badger basketball, and Nigel Hayes has been at the center of it all.

All that on-court success is great and obviously a huge part of his legacy, but what really set Hayes apart and made him one of the most unique players in college basketball was everything he did away from the court.

He provided us with laughs as intrepid reporter Nigel Burgundy, kept press conference stenographers on their toes with his extensive vocabulary and helped student season ticket holders get free donuts.

But most importantly, he’s been passionate about giving back to the community and has never been afraid to stand up for causes and issues that he believes in. Hayes has spoken out against racial injustices at UW–Madison and police brutality against African Americans in the U.S.—stances that didn’t sit well with the segment of fans that are aghast at the thought of athletes talking about things other than sports.

He also has been a vocal critic of the NCAA and its compensation (or lack thereof ) for athletes. He stirred up controversy when he showed up to College Gameday this past October with a “Broke College Athlete Anything Helps” sign, asking spectators to send cash to a Venmo account. He then took the money raised from that and donated it to the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, helping families in need go on a holiday shopping spree. He befriended one of those families, whose father was dying of cancer, giving them a reason to smile during the toughest holiday season of their lives. If you haven’t read the full story on that, I urge you to look it up, but keep a box of tissues handy.

It’s just one of many examples of him giving back to the community and tells you all you need to know about the kind of person Nigel Hayes is.

So before Hayes receives his business finance degree in a few weeks at graduation and his time here officially ends, take a moment to appreciate how special it’s been to have him these past four years.

Thank you, Nigel. Madison won’t be the same without you.