Down the slippery slope

MAY 3 UPDATE: Lift-in has been postponed from May 4 to May 18 because, as you may have noticed, we still don't have any piers yet! (Who wants to bet it will be postponed again come May 17?)

Lift-in is now scheduled for next Saturday, May 4. As of this past Friday, the National Weather Service was forecasting 5–8" of snow for yesterday, April 27; Madison got half an inch. Nevertheless, the forecast and 35° temps were enough to suppress turnout at the annual Mifflin Street Block Party (photo at right), and it would have been an awful day for lift-in. Yesterday's mini-blizzard did get us thinking, though...

As Hoofer Sailing completes its transition to a draconian kiddie fest where everyone in any position of authority has plausible deniability, the UW-Madison continues its slide into mediocrity. One alarming symptom of the slide: library closings. The Biology, Business, Chemistry, Geography, and Engineering libraries have already been shuttered, with many more to come. They are being turned into "book free zones" where students can go to hang out. Engineering (Wendt) was a major campus library.

Not only is the UW closing libraries; the idle minds in Bascom are canceling journals by the truckload and have been for some years now. Not just the printed journals, mind you, but the electronic (PDF) versions as well. In academia, technical journals are the only thing more important than books.

“I think it’s very sensible and practical,” said Ed Van Gemert, vice provost for libraries. And much cheaper too.

The reasons for "consolidating" libraries are two-fold. One is budgetary--as fewer and fewer full-pay (read: wealthy) students, e.g. from out east and overseas, choose UW-Madison, and as the Republican legislature continues to slash funding, something has to go. Why not the libraries? The second reason, which is entirely unadvertized: it's much easier to manage surveillance at a smaller number of large libraries (with their smaller number of entry choke-points) than at three dozen smaller libraries. In other words, the savings obtained by cancelling hundreds of important professional journals is being used to install more and more surveillance cameras. The self-serving fearmongers at UWPD are pushing this, in part through their campus-wide poster campaign. Of course, cops who can barely read or write have no use for technical journals.

One has to wonder what the UW's priorities are. As UW-Madison plummeted from the 10th ranked U.S. university overall in 1982 to 44th in 2017, the football program has gone from a perennial also-ran to a powerhouse, and the UW has become the top party school in America. Libraries may be crucial to academics, but they aren't needed for football or parties! The overall plan is to get rid of an astounding 75% of research materials.

The latest proposal is to turn Memorial Library into an all-season, multi-level playing field for frisbee golf.

But seriously, how about a climbing wall on College Library with some zip lines leading down to Hoofers?! Meanwhile in HSC, responsible adults are prohibited from taking beer on cruises and are required to wear their lifejacket at all times lest they stumble overboard in an alcohol withdrawal-induced catalepsy and drown.

'Judgment' has officially been removed from the requirements for a keelboat skipper rating.