Our Boys: Statewide Loyalty to Wisconsin’s Sports Teams

They may be called the Green Bay Packers and the Milwaukee Brewers, but the degree to which major sports teams in Wisconsin are embraced by fans everywhere else in the state is not common in the sports world. These are “our teams” even if they play 100 or 200 miles away.

That’s on exhibit for all the world to see this week with the Packers’ appearance coming up Sunday in the Super Bowl. Fan loyalty to the Packers in Milwaukee, for example, often seems to know little limit, even though the team stopped playing in Milwaukee in the mid-1990s and (dare I say this) from Milwaukee, it is just about the same distance to Soldier Field in Chicago as it is to Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

Much less noted is the degree to which the Brewers are a Wisconsin team.

In an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session last week at Eckstein Hall, Rick Schlesinger, the Brewers’ executive vice president for business operations, talked about how important it is for the team to give people who attend games a good experience, and how important out-state fans are to the Brewers.

“We have to draw from not just Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin,

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Murder Sentences Becoming “Too Flat and Too Severe,” Barrock Lecturer Says

A reactor or a radiator?

A radiator performs service by dissipating heat. A reactor generates increasingly intense heat, presenting difficult challenges for how to contain that heat.

Punishment for murder in the United States increasingly resembles a reactor more than a radiator, Prof. Jonathan Simon at Boalt Hall, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, said in a lecture at Marquette University Law School Monday. And like a reactor, the trends in murder sentences are building up heat that presents increasing challenges.

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And What Should We Do About Third-Graders’ Reading Proficiency?

Gov. Scott Walker told school leaders from Wisconsin in a speech last week that he wants all children to read at grade level when they finish third grade. Conquering the basics of reading by that point is widely held by educators to be a key to long-term success for students.  Walker used the phrases used by some educators, saying that, through third grade, children learn to read, but from fourth grade on, they read to learn. So a kid who isn’t reading well in later grades will be a kid who isn’t learning well. “I just think that’s imperative,” Walker said, to make proficient reading a benchmark for every child before fourth grade starts.

I agree with that. You agree with that. We all agree with that. So what do we do about it?

Walker didn’t spell out what kind of action he would put behind the idea.

Does he favor ending the practice called social promotion?

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