A photo taken circa 1973, when the McDonald’s was five years old. Today, it’s a post office. Wisconsin Historical Society

For almost four decades, the corner of State and Lake was home to a beloved institution where UW students could get a quick bite. No, not the lunch counter at Rennebohm Drug Store, though that had its fans. Across the street and one door down, at 441 N. Lake, stood McDonald’s, offering those in need a quick infusion of all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, and sesame-seed buns.

This McDonald’s franchise appeared on the campus scene in 1968, the same year that the Big Mac was added to the menu at all of the chain’s restaurants. Ray Kroc himself — the man who turned, ahem, Scottish cuisine into an American phenomenon — made an appearance at the opening of the company’s 1,031st outlet. Between then and 2006, the spot served the campus community with uncounted tons of beef, one quarter pound at a time, as well as McMuffins, McNuggets, and the famed french fries that were invented by Edwin Traisman, onetime administrator of the UW Food Research Institute.

By the 21st century, the Lake Street McDonald’s was showing its age, and its owners felt it was too expensive to renovate. They sold the site to the U.S. Postal Service, which has operated a post office there ever since.

The departure provoked mixed emotions. Then-alder Austin King ’03 told the Badger Herald that he wouldn’t shed any tears over the loss of McDonald’s. But Charlie Burns ’09 responded that losing it was upsetting. “That McDonald’s used to be my pre-football game meeting place … to get breakfast,” he said. The McD’s on Regent Street was too far away.

The post office still stands at 441 N. Lake, but the area around it is in flux. The city closed the Lake Street Campus Garage in December 2023, aiming to turn the lot into apartments, parking, retail space, and a bus station. The nearest McFlurry is still a mile away — 21 minutes by foot or seven minutes to the drive-thru.

A playful twist on traditional English pageantry. Andy Manis

For a few magical nights each holiday season, UW–Madison practically transforms into 16th-century Oxford. The annual Tudor Holiday Dinner Concerts, hosted by the Wisconsin Union, put a playful twist on traditional English pageantry. Gathered in Memorial Union’s decked-out Great Hall, guests indulge in a feast fit for royalty while enjoying a spirited performance from the Philharmonic Chorus of Madison and a ceremonial presentation of a (fake) boar’s head.

The Tudor Holiday Dinner Concerts date to 1933, when a group of singers under the direction of music professor Edgar Gordon ’27, MA’29 performed at the University Club and the Memorial Union. The boar’s head was inspired by a tradition at the University of Rochester in New York, which drew on an old English legend of a scholar who slew a wild boar by ramming a book by Aristotle down its throat. (Score a point for academia?)

The evening typically begins with a cocktail hour, with hors d’oeuvres and traditional wassail (hot mulled cider). When the bells ring, it’s time for the presentation of the boar’s head, a yuletide toast, and the start of the feast. The Wisconsin Union’s catering team brings out the extravagant spread. This year’s entrées include maple-glazed pork tenderloin with mustard fingerlings and a vegetarian maple-glazed acorn squash. Dessert is always flaming figgy pudding with a hard sauce.

The UW’s Tudor Singers performed at the event until 1972, when the Philharmonic Chorus of Madison took over. Now, the crowd sings along with the ensemble’s holiday carols. The night ends with a formal concert, which includes stately renditions of “Silent Night” and Mozart’s “Dona Nobis Pacem.”

After a COVID-19 hiatus in 2020 and 2021, the Tudor Holiday Dinner Concerts return this year to Great Hall. The Wisconsin Union will host five events from November 30 to December 4, offering some 250 tickets for each.

“Tudor Holiday Dinner Concerts are nights of relaxation, delicious food, and beautiful artistry,” says Shauna Breneman, communications director for the Wisconsin Union. “They are the perfect way to enjoy winter as a family, couple, or group of friends.”

In other words: long may this tradition reign.

UW athletes will be able to earn $5,980 per year for academic awards. Jeff Miller

In July, the UW Department of Athletics committed to providing academic-based financial awards to student-athletes for the 2022–23 school year and beyond.

Under the plan, all UW student-athletes — regardless of whether they’re on an athletic scholarship — will have the opportunity to earn up to $5,980 per year. That dollar amount represents the maximum allowable award for academic performance following the landmark NCAA v. Alston Supreme Court case last year. The court ruled that universities may not limit education-related benefits for student-athletes, opening the door to direct financial payments for academic achievement. However, the ruling allows the NCAA to cap the amount proportional to the financial value a student-athlete can receive from athletic-performance awards.

“As soon as the Supreme Court ruling was determined, we knew we wanted to commit the full allotment to our student-athletes,” says UW athletic director Chris McIntosh ’04, MS’19. “I’m really proud of the fact that we can provide our athletes with a significant amount of money to start their postgraduate lives.”

In April, ESPN reported that Wisconsin was the first Big Ten school to have a plan in place to provide academic bonus payments in 2022. At that time, only 22 of the 130 schools that ESPN surveyed had committed to such payments this year.

In addition, the UW’s approach to disbursing the payments will incentivize the completion of a degree. Student-athletes who are academically eligible for the award will receive $980 per year until their athletic eligibility has expired. Once they graduate, they will receive the additional $5,000 for each year, up to $25,000. The university’s commitment totals more than $3.8 million per year.

“This is a game changer for Wisconsin,” says women’s soccer coach Paula Wilkins. “For me to be able to offer every athlete, including walk-ons, this award money can’t be [overstated]. I think about this from my own personal perspective as a former student-athlete and the impact $20,000 upon graduation would have had for setting up my future. I’m thrilled for our players.”

The thing about being an undergraduate is, you are not usually tuned in to fine dining. Generally, undergrads have neither the time nor the money to be gourmands.

With the money I saved, though, I would reward myself with a slice of fudge-bottom pie or a Babcock ice cream cone from the Union — or better, a hot fudge sundae if I rode my bike out to Babcock Hall. And every so often, I would invest in a glass of good red wine and a slice of Queen of Sheba cake at the then-reigning monarch of State Street dining, the Ovens of Brittany.

My good friend Becky Harth ’82, who waitressed at the Ovens while in school, remembers the restaurant’s morning buns, as well as other local favorites: “Rocky Rococo slices, sprout and cheese sandwiches on grain bread, and tap beer — never from bottles.” It’s a representative selection from the early 1980s. There are beginnings of locavorism side by side with remnants of hippie dishes and the pizza and beer beloved by 20-year-olds everywhere.

Although UW–Madison doesn’t have a dish named after it, the school has plenty of reasons to distinguish it as a unique culinary zone. And besides, who wants to eat Harvard beets anyway?

In the Beginning

The first dining hall on campus was in South Hall, one of the original dormitories along with North Hall. Scott Seyforth PhD’14, current assistant director of residence life, says the kitchen was overseen by the wife of math professor John Sterling.

Many students, however, lived off campus and would have needed to find food elsewhere. Following a fire in Science Hall in 1884, North and South Halls were taken over for classroom instruction, and there were no dorms for men until the opening of Tripp and Adams in 1926. Women continued living on campus in Ladies Hall, which was later renamed for UW president Paul Chadbourne — in a kind of reprimand by President E. A. Birge, who wanted to punish Chadbourne for his lack of enthusiasm for coeducation on campus. While no official menus or recipes have survived from this earliest era of the UW, it’s reasonable to assume students ate meals the way other Madisonians did during the period. Recipes from early residents were collected by Lynne Watrous Hamel in 1974’s A Taste of Old Madison. In the latter half of the 1800s, soups might range from those familiar today, like black bean, to a corn soup made with plenty of venison — or, barring the availability of that meat, rabbit, squirrel, pigeon, or duck.

Hamel includes a recipe for popovers from President Birge’s wife, Anna; cornmeal/pumpkin pancakes from Emma Curtiss Bascom, wife of president John Bascom; and crullers from the wife of Thomas Chamberlin, who followed Bascom as president. These doughnuts would not be unfamiliar to the decades of students who have haunted the Greenbush Bakery on Regent Street for treats fresh out of the fryer.

Desserts tended to be spice and fruit cakes or fruit pies; cookies were likely to be ginger, oatmeal, or sugar. Chocolate, that staple of today’s desserts, was not produced for the mass market until the late 1800s.

Carson Gulley: Influencer

The next era of UW cuisine begins in December 1926 with the hiring of Carson Gulley as head chef of the new Van Hise Refectory, which opened in conjunction with the first lakeshore dorms that year. Don Halverson MA 1918, then director of dormitories and commons, discovered Gulley working in a resort up north and hired him on the strength of his cooking.

Gulley was influential not just in campus kitchens, where he paid special attention to cook training, but in Madison as a whole. As an African American, he fought Madison segregation laws for years along with his wife, Beatrice, in their attempts to buy a house.

The couple encountered so many barriers that the UW built the Gulleys an apartment in the basement of Tripp Hall before they finally managed to buy a home in the Crestwood subdivision.

He and Beatrice had a pioneering cooking show on Madison television in the 1950s, and many area families and UW graduates still use his method for roasting a turkey — no basting required. Still, Gulley is most often remembered as the creator of the UW’s fudge-bottom pie: a graham-cracker-crusted, vanilla-custard-filled, whipped-cream-topped concoction distinguished by a bottom layer of intense chocolate. Some sources claim the recipe came from two chefs at the Memorial Union, and both the dorm cafeterias and the Union have served the pie for years. As its originator, Gulley wins out in popular memory, and his recipe for the pie is included in his cookbook Seasoning Secrets and Favorite Recipes of Carson Gulley.

Celebrity chef Carson Gulley, creator of the UW’s fudge-bottom pie. UW Archives S15057

Gulley, who died in 1962, was honored when the Van Hise Refectory was renamed Carson Gulley Commons in 1966. It’s now called Carson’s Market within the Carson Gulley Center.

The Mysterious Maizo Salad

Since the Memorial Union opened in 1928, it’s been in the business of serving daily breakfast, lunch, and supper from fast student sustenance to fine dining. For much of the 20th century, the Georgian Grill was a table-service, linen-tablecloth restaurant on the second floor, while Tripp Commons was a cafeteria-style gathering place for faculty and students (in addition to the Rathskeller and the Lakefront Cafeteria on the first floor). Ted Crabb ’54, director of the Memorial Union from 1968 to 2000, says the Georgian Grill was a “very elegant dining room” used to entertain visiting guests and was frequented by the public before theater performances. Faculty would bring their families there for dinner in the evening.

Tripp Commons often saw faculty and their students meeting at lunch, pulling tables together, and “discussing the issues of the day,” says Crabb. “There was a sense of community.”

Many Union menus from Tripp Commons and the Georgian Grill from the 1940s have been saved in the University Archives. Lunches usually included a lighter option like a sandwich or creamed chipped beef on toast, but there were also heartier entrées that could serve as dinner.

Dinners included an entrée, vegetable, fruit, roll, and beverage. Meat was the star of the show — veal, lamb, pork chops, steak, roast beef, chicken. There was the occasional inclusion of smoked beef tongue or one-offs like a chicken liver omelet with creole sauce. Global cuisine was limited to chow mein and “Italian spaghetti with meatballs and parmesan cheese.”

Crabb says the most popular meal at the Georgian Grill was steak, and the most requested dessert was fudge-bottom pie.

Salads were also in rotation. Lots of them. In addition to a spinach salad that wouldn’t be out of place in today’s dining rooms, there was “banana and salted peanut,” “devilled cabbage,” many aspics and gelatins, and some whose ingredients are likely lost to time, like a perplexing “Maizo” salad.

1955 cookbooks with recipes for “veal birds.” UW Archives

Most dishes say “1940s America” more than they say “Wisconsin” specifically, although the state’s cheeses are sometimes called out as part of a menu item. “Fresh red plum with Wisconsin cheese and toasted crackers,” “Wis. blue cheese with t. crax.,” “apple pie with Wisconsin cheese,” and “grilled Wisconsin cheese sandwich” all make appearances. The recipe for the mysterious “veal birds,” an entrée that crops up frequently in the 1940s Union menus, is included in both a 1955 and a 1965 version of a cookbook for Elizabeth Waters Residence Hall. It collected recipes “for all girls of Liz who will wish to recapture an important part of dorm life — mealtime,” as the introduction to the 1955 edition puts it. Veal birds are strips of veal steak stuffed with a bread-cube dressing, rolled, and baked.

Another milestone from midcentury was the Babcock Dairy Store, which was an innovation included in plans for the new Babcock Hall in 1950. The small dairy bar on Linden Drive was intended primarily for campus patrons, as the university did not want its product to compete with commercial ice cream producers.

Comfort Food

Campus dining underwent many changes during the reign of Rheta McCutchin ’56, food service director from 1958 to 2002. In the 1970s, McCutchin was instrumental in creating an eater-friendly, à la carte model. She said the other Big Ten schools thought the UW was crazy for going to individual item choice and pricing, but the system served the university well for many years. McCutchin was also instrumental in making food available at a wider range of hours and introducing more global flavors into the menu.

When Julie Luke began working for dining services in 1985, many of Carson Gulley’s original recipes were still in rotation. “Probably up to 1995 or so, there were a lot of remnants of cuisine that started with Carson,” says Luke, who retired in 2017 as associate director.

By the mid-1990s, though, even modifying the old recipes wasn’t quite working. “That older-style food just wasn’t what the students were looking for,” Luke remembers. “But I think the basics of what Carson stood for — the quality of ingredients, his technique, his commitment to teaching students — have stayed.”

Luke says student favorites tended to be “comfort food,” like macaroni and cheese or mashed potatoes and gravy. And they were good — made from scratch.

Luke mentions a popular mint brownie from the mid-1980s. The minute the words are out of her mouth, that brownie materializes in front of me like the dagger in front of Macbeth. Dense and fudgy, it had a layer of vivid mint-green frosting. A recipe for “Creme de Menthe Bars” is included in McCutchin’s three-ring binders held in Steenbock Library, with the suggestion that green food coloring and extra mint extract can be substituted for the creme de menthe. It sure sounds like the brownie I remember. The bad news for the from-scratch crowd: its base ingredient is Pillsbury Tradition Brownie Fudge Mix.

I was unable to track down another dessert bar I think I remember from that era. It had a sweet crumb crust so caramelized it might as well have been pure brown sugar, topped with a mix of nuts, dried fruits, granola, and chocolate chips. “It was very sweet,” I tell Luke, probably unnecessarily, but she doesn’t recall the dessert. Anybody?

Personal Kitchens

Peter Testory, the current director of dining and culinary services, emphasizes the attention that his team gives to student suggestions when it comes to recipe development. “First and foremost, we continually gather student feedback,” he says. “What are the flavor profiles that they’re looking for?” This evolves constantly with each new group of students.

In the last five years, Testory has seen students looking for bolder and spicier flavors, but interest in food doesn’t stop at how it tastes. “We’ve seen a huge increase in interest in where the food comes from, what manufacturers we have relationships with, and the practices of those manufacturers,” he says. “How do they treat their employees? What humane practices do they have for animals? The whole process.”

That includes a reusable to-go container program. Students exchange a token for the container, which can then be returned to be cleaned. Upon return, the student gets a new token.

Testory sees the dining halls as being students’ “personal kitchens,” and so it is crucial to “make sure that we are in tune with what menu offerings they want.” That can mean the availability of grab-and-go items as well as plenty of options for what looks like an old-fashioned sit-down dinner. Today, boneless chicken wings are one of the most consistently popular items.

Dining areas are now called “markets,” and the choices available are like a cafeteria times four. Stations serve customizable pastas, pizza, noodle bowls, stir fries, and multiple vegetarian and vegan options like dal, black bean burgers, and tempeh with red peppers and broccoli rabe. There’s even vegan beer-battered cod for a traditional — or maybe not so traditional — Friday fish fry.

“We’re starting to see more and more interest in our plant-based vegan and vegetarian options — grain bowls, Beyond burgers, plant-based chicken nuggets and patties,” Testory says.

Yet even though the markets are full of dishes that Carson Gulley might not recognize, such as a barbecue jackfruit sandwich or imam bayildi, there are, too, daily options that could make Gulley — or most alumni — believe they’d been transported back to the campus of an earlier era. Beef sirloin tips. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Roasted brussels sprouts. Herb-crusted pork loin. Homestyle mac ’n’ cheese. And yes, even a slice of fudge-bottom pie now and then.

How to Make UW–Madison’s Fudge Bottom Pie

Ingredients

Crust:

• 4 ounces graham crumbs
• 2 ounces brown sugar
• 2.5 ounces melted butter
• Pinch of salt

Custard:

• 16 ounces whole milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 5 ounces granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 ounce cornstarch
• 1 ounce butter (note that this is not mentioned among the ingredients in the video, but do include it!)
• 2 ounces high-quality dark chocolate, chopped

Whipped cream:

• 16 ounces heavy cream
• ¼ cup powdered sugar
• ½ teaspoon vanilla

Garnish:

2 tablespoons of shaved chocolate

Making a fudge-bottom pie with Ruthie Schommer, University Housing pastry chef. Photos by Bryce Richter

To Make the Crust

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, by hand. Pat down into a standard 9-inch pie pan and bake at 325 for 12 minutes. Cool completely.

To Make the Custard

Combine milk, half the sugar, salt, and vanilla in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk together cornstarch and sugar in a small bowl, then whisk in eggs. When milk mixture is at a simmer, temper in egg mixture and bring just to a boil, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and whisk in butter until fully incorporated. Strain.

Remove 8 ounces of vanilla custard and combine with the 2 ounces of chopped dark chocolate immediately; the heat of the custard should melt the chocolate.

Cover remaining vanilla custard with plastic wrap, so that the wrap is fully in contact with the surface of the custard, to prevent it from forming a skin. Refrigerate 6-8 hours or overnight before assembling the pie. Cover the chocolate custard likewise and also refrigerate until pie assembly.

To Assemble the Pie

Whip cream, powdered sugar and vanilla in a small mixer bowl fitted with the whisk attachment until light and fluffy.

While the cream is whipping, spread the chocolate custard mixture evenly onto the bottom of the pie crust.

Fold about a quarter of the whipped cream into the vanilla custard, then spread evenly over the chocolate custard layer.

Finally, top with remaining whipped cream. Garnish with shaved chocolate.

The Lakeshore Path beckons marathon runners, nature-loving hikers, and contemplative strollers. Bryce Richter

Just steps from a bustling urban campus lies a tranquil, tree-lined trail, where birds sing in a chorus above and waves gently roll into the shore below. Such is the magic of UW–Madison’s Lakeshore Path.

The path traces the shoreline of Lake Mendota for nearly four and a half miles. Officially, it’s composed of two trail segments: the Howard Temin Path and the Lake Mendota Path. The former extends from North Park Street near the Memorial Union westward to Oxford Road. It intersects with the Lake Mendota Path at the main entrance of the ever-popular Picnic Point. This next segment guides travelers to the tip of the panoramic peninsula and then along the lakeshore to Wally Bauman Woods near the Eagle Heights community. These paths tie together the several distinct areas of the 300-acre Lakeshore Nature Preserve, including the less-traveled Frautschi Point at the northernmost coordinate of campus. (Those with a keen eye may even find evidence of old cottages in this portion of the Lakeshore Path.)

Completing the nearly milelong jaunt from the entrance of Picnic Point to the tip provides a unique perspective on campus, the capitol building, and much of Madison. Such views are so seductive that the San Francisco Examiner branded Picnic Point the “kissing-est spot in North America” in 1992. Visitors can also reserve one of the six fire circles scattered throughout this trail. And signs of the area’s earliest inhabitants remain, with several Native American burial mounds near the path. (Staying on the marked trails pays respect to these sacred sites.)

It’s no wonder that thousands flock to the Lakeshore Path each year. It remains one of the few natural areas in Madison that welcome dogs (on leash). Bicyclists are permitted on the Howard Temin Path segment as a shortcut to campus, and customizable routes fulfill the desires of marathon runners, nature-loving hikers, and contemplative strollers alike.

“I’ve walked this path periodically over 40 years and still appreciate the multitude of views it presents of Lake Mendota,” writes a reviewer on the Tripadvisor website. “Whether engaging in conversation with friends or seeking inner solitude, the Lakeshore Path soothes, nourishes, and consistently delivers.”

UW Marching Band director Corey Pompey ushers in a new era for the Badger Bash at Union South. Bryce Richter

Fifty years ago, Badger Bash — the ultimate pregame festivity for Wisconsin football fans — was born.

When the original Union South opened in 1971, former Wisconsin Union manager Merrill “Corky” Sischo noticed a sea of Badger fans passing through the building for food and drinks before home football games. He connected with Mike Leckrone, then the fresh-faced director of the UW Marching Band, and together they threw the first official Badger Bash outside Union South in 1972.

The event started as a low-stakes opportunity for the marching band and pompon squad to warm up in front of a small audience. But by 1974, more than 3,000 fans were packing Union South’s grounds. They came for increasingly razzle-dazzle performances as well as brats and beer. In the early years, the event extended to after the game, with polkas and jazz by the Doc De Haven ’58 band in the Carousel room.

“As the crowd continued to grow, the performance became more ‘formulated’ but was still very relaxed,” Leckrone said shortly before his retirement in 2019.

Today, Badger Bash’s recipe largely remains the same. The free tailgate begins two and a half hours before every home football game, hosted by local celebrity emcees. Classic Wisconsin tailgate fare is still served, alongside more than 100 food and beverage options. (Bloody Mary bar, anyone?) The marching band, UW Spirit Squad, and Bucky himself take the stage around 90 minutes before kickoff with a preview of the halftime show and a plentiful helping of hip-swinging UW hits. The event is rounded out with kid-friendly activities and rivalry-related competitions. And fans without a ticket to the game can stick around and watch on the big screen at The Sett.

Badger Bash has become so beloved that the new Union South was practically built for it. The southwest plaza is roughly double the size of its predecessor, and architects specifically designed the space to accommodate the band’s staging needs.

In 2019, Corey Pompey made his public debut as the marching band director at the home-opening Badger Bash. The band delighted the crowd with the usual Badger hits, including the “Beer Barrel Polka.” But Pompey also introduced contemporary songs from the likes of Adele, The Killers, and Cardi B. Welcome to the new era of Badger Bash.

YouDub Marketplace is helping players like Badger football’s Graham Mertz navigate the new landscape of college athletics after the NCAA adopted a policy to allow student-athletes to profit from their use of name, image, and likeness. Jeff Miller

Good news, Wisconsin sports fans: you can now book your favorite Badger.

In April, UW athletics launched the YouDub Marketplace, where businesses and Badger fans alike can pitch profitable opportunities to UW student-athletes. The online marketplace is helping players and the public navigate the new landscape of college athletics after the NCAA adopted a new policy to allow student-athletes to profit from their use of name, image, and likeness (NIL).

While companies can use the platform to arrange formal sponsorship and advertising deals, fans can pitch any concept — a social media shout-out, an autograph, a special appearance — at a starting rate of $30. The student-athlete then has seven days to review the pitch. UW athletics recently partnered with Altius Sports Partners, an NIL education firm, to provide guidance to student-athletes. The players also have access to free campus resources, including legal advice and contract review from the UW Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic and business coaching from the Wisconsin Small Business Development Center.

YouDub Marketplace visitors are greeted with a photo grid of Badger student-athletes, and clicking on each profile brings up a biography, links to social media accounts, and a list of personal interests. Quarterback Graham Mertz x’23’s profile displays his personal logo and his interest in food, gaming, and music. Volleyball star Devyn Robinson x’24’s profile notes she’s a pet owner.

The marketplace, developed by NIL technology company Opendorse, is one of the first of its kind in college athletics.

Pitches & Notes performs during the competition’s final round: “We are thrilled to bring these accolades home to UW.”

In April, the UW–Madison treble group Pitches & Notes made history, winning first place at the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) finals in New York City. Pitches & Notes is the UW’s first group to win that contest, as well as the first group from the Great Lakes region.

“We were so stunned,” says Hyunji Haynes ’22. “We are thrilled to bring these accolades home to UW and the greater Madison community. We could not have it done it without all the support!”

Ten groups from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom competed at the ICCA finals. Each prepared a 10-minute set and choreography.

Bryce Richter

In May, UW–Madison added its newest campus monument: the Divine Nine Garden Plaza. Designed to honor the achievements and contributions of the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities, the plaza is situated on East Campus Mall and includes nine markers grouped in a circle. Here, members and alumnae of Sigma Gamma Rho pose in front of their sorority’s marker.

In reality, Holley’s thoughts about UW–Madison are mixed. He met terrific friends on campus and received a great education, he says, but he also remembers regularly being called racial slurs on State Street at bar time and watching a fellow Black student pack up and leave school after being aggressively harassed because of his race while walking to his dorm. The administration, he says, didn’t seem to care very much.

Recently, when a researcher with UW–Madison’s Public History Project contacted Holley to discuss his time at the university, he agreed to sit for an oral history interview, intrigued by the prospect. As he shared his experiences as a student of color on a predominantly white campus, he appreciated the opportunity to have an extended discussion about complex issues.

“They really wanted to hear from me in an in-depth way,” says Holley, a Chicago attorney. Since fall 2019, researchers with the Public History Project have completed 140 oral history interviews with alumni and current students. They’ve dug deep into the university’s archives, scoured decades of media coverage, and read 168 volumes of the Badger yearbook and the Daily Cardinal.

The effort is intended to give voice to those who experienced and challenged prejudice on campus. Over the past three years, the project’s researchers have shared their findings through campus presentations, special events, and blog posts.

The project will culminate this fall with an exhibition at the Chazen Museum of Art and a companion online gallery and archive. Spanning more than 150 years, Sifting & Reckoning: UW–Madison’s History of Exclusion and Resistance (September 12–December 23) will make space for the university’s underrecognized and unseen histories. The title plays off “sifting and winnowing,” the iconic phrase that has come to represent the fearless pursuit of knowledge at UW–Madison.

“Reckoning is an active, participatory process, and that’s so important when thinking about this project,” says Kacie Lucchini Butcher, the project’s director. “We have to know this history and grapple with it — even if it’s uncomfortable and hard to face — because that’s part of making the university a more equitable place.”

The challenge was to figure out how best to approach this sensitive subject.

A Clean Break

The project has roots in the university’s response to the 2017 white supremacist rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia. In the wake of the tragedy, UW–Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank denounced the ideologies of all hate groups and said it was time to confront racist elements in the university’s past and make a clean break with them. She appointed a study group to look at two student groups that bore the name of the Ku Klux Klan around the 1920s.

One of the groups, a fraternity house, was found to be affiliated with the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The other, an interfraternity honor society composed of student leaders, had no documented connection to the national KKK and no known racist ideology. Its name remains inexplicable.

In compiling its report, the study group identified a broader pattern of exclusion. It concluded that the history the UW needed to confront was not the aberrant work of a few individuals or groups but a pervasive campus culture of racism and religious bigotry that went largely unchallenged in the early 1900s and was a defining feature of American life in general at that time. Blank commissioned the Public History Project as one of several responses.

“The study group’s findings pointed to a need to build a more inclusive university community through an honest reckoning with our past,” Blank said at the time. The project comes as the university seeks to make sure all members of the campus community feel welcome and respected. A first-ever campus climate survey in 2016 found that historically underrepresented and disadvantaged groups, while reporting generally positive experiences on campus, consistently rated the climate less favorably than students from majority groups. The survey was repeated last fall with similar findings. Both surveys also revealed that students value diversity and that it’s important to them that the university does, too.

The Public History Project is uniquely suited to advance this goal.

Putting History to Use

Lucchini Butcher describes public history as an approach that seeks to elevate the stories of community members — especially those previously ignored or discounted — and share them in accessible, pragmatic ways.

“I think of history as a tool, and I’m always trying to think about how we can put it to use for people,” she says.

UW–Madison is far from alone in scrutinizing problematic parts of its history. The University of Virginia, for example, leads a research consortium of more than 80 higher education institutions with historic ties to slavery. Harvard University, one prominent consortium member, announced in April the creation of a $100 million fund to study and redress its early complicity with slave labor.

Even amid this widespread reckoning, UW–Madison’s effort stands out, says Stephanie Rowe, executive director of the National Council on Public History. While many such projects focus on a particular strand of a university’s past, UW–Madison is employing a broader lens. And while many begin as faculty-initiated research projects, the UW created a public history project and hired a full-time director to see it through. The project is expected to cost $1 million and is being paid for with private funds, not taxpayer money.

“We don’t often see a university initiate and support a public history project of this design and this magnitude,” Rowe says.

Sifting & Reckoning: UW–Madison’s History of Exclusion and Resistance makes space for the university’s underrecognized and unseen histories. Capital Times / UW Archives; Daily Cardinal / UW Archives (2)

Wrongs and Rights

In the Chazen exhibition, the Public History Project unflinchingly faces the university’s past.

Visitors will see the large “Pipe of Peace” used by students a century ago at ceremonies that parodied Native American life. They’ll view posters for campus minstrel shows and watch an undercover film from the 1960s that documents housing discrimination in Madison. The film was thought to have been destroyed by the university but actually sat for decades out of view in UW Archives.

They’ll meet Weathers “Sonny” Sykes ’50, the first Black man to enter an otherwise all-white fraternity at UW–Madison when he joined the Jewish fraternity Phi Sigma Delta in 1949, and Liberty Rashad, one of the organizers of the 1969 Black Student Strike.

They’ll learn about law student Brigid McGuire JDx’96, who in 1994 contested the physical inaccessibility of UW classrooms by removing a portion of a desk with a circular saw to create room for her motorized wheelchair — amid applause from her fellow classmates. And Mildred Gordon, a Jewish woman, who sued the owners of the private Langdon Hall dormitory after arriving in 1929 and being told her room had been given to a non-Jewish person.

Other components of the exhibition explore fraternity and sorority life, Badger athletics, student activism, and prejudice in the classroom. There are deeply shameful incidents, like the campus “gay purges” between 1948 and 1962, but also stories of bravery and resilience as marginalized groups claimed their rightful place on campus.

The exhibition also captures times when UW–Madison as an institution, and especially its students and employees, landed on the right side of history. The Groves Housing Cooperative, founded by the university in 1944, had no racial or religious restrictions and was the first interracial housing cooperative on campus. In another example, many UW–Madison professors and students fought to admit Japanese American students to the university during and immediately after World War II, against stiff government opposition.

“We share in the legacy of what our university has been in the past, whether we realize it or not,” says Joy Block PhDx’23, a doctoral candidate in history who researched Japanese American Badgers for the project. “What I really like about this project is that you get a fuller picture of that history. Sometimes that reveals our failures, sometimes our successes. And sometimes it just reveals our humanity.”

Essential Discussions

Supporters of the Public History Project anticipate criticism, expecting that some will question its value or view it as unnecessary or revisionist history.

John Dichtl, president of the American Association for State and Local History, says it may be helpful for people to view history as a form of detective work.

“To think critically, you need all the information, the full sweep of the past,” he says. “The term revisionist history is often held up as bad, but this is what historians are always doing. Like detectives, they build their cases step by step over time, then revise and update their conclusions based on new evidence, questions, and perspectives.”

It is especially important that institutions of higher education do this work, Dichtl says.

“How can a university call itself a center of learning if it is not fully honest about its own past and its own history?” he asks. “Engaging students in critical thinking about these issues is important for its own teaching mission.”

UW–Madison history professor Stephen Kantrowitz, who chairs the Public History Project Steering Committee, says the project is providing curricular materials to instructors and encouraging them to tour the exhibition with their students.

“My hope is that all of these things the project has identified and collected — the research, the analysis, the interviews, the archives — will enable generations of students and teachers here to use the university’s own history as a laboratory for their study of how people have lived and interacted, how they’ve resolved conflict, and how they’ve worked to change society,” he says.

Kantrowitz likens the project to sitting down with an elder and learning the full sweep of your family’s history, including the worst parts.

“All those painful silences around the dinner table suddenly make more sense,” he says. “That’s what we’re doing here. We’re collectively sitting down with the family photo album and trying to figure out why we have these ongoing conflicts — conflicts over questions that are not unique to the campus but are fundamental American struggles, about race, about gender, about sexuality, about disability, about all sorts of questions that continue to be socially difficult for us.”

LaVar Charleston MS’07, PhD’10, the university’s chief diversity officer, views the project as a beginning, not an end. Its findings will provide a common starting point for essential discussions about how the university addresses or redresses these long-standing issues.

“We have a tendency as a society to act like things didn’t happen, to sweep things under the rug,” says Charleston, who leads the Division of Diversity, Equity, & Educational Achievement. “This is the opposite of that. This is the university taking the initiative and confronting the ghosts that have haunted this campus for decades. Of course, we’re going to unearth some things that may look bad, but I’m proud that we’re being proactive about understanding our history. It’s the only way to make the necessary adjustments so that the impact from discrimination doesn’t continue to happen.”

Finally Being Heard

Charles Holley’s name will be familiar to many alumni. As an undergraduate in the late 1980s, he chaired the UW–Madison Steering Committee on Minority Affairs. The committee’s final document, which became known as the Holley Report, was a forerunner of 1988’s Madison Plan, the university’s first formalized diversity plan.

Holley says the histories of institutions like UW–Madison are often told by those with money, power, and influence. The Public History Project serves as a needed corrective. To those who may criticize the university for “airing its dirty laundry,” Holley has a response.

“It’s already out there. It’s certainly out there in the communities that I care about. If you haven’t heard about it before, you might ask yourself why not.”

By interviewing current students and recent alumni, the project underscores that prejudice remains an issue today on campus. Ariana Thao ’20, who is Hmong, says other students sometimes taunted or mocked her as she walked down State Street. They’d yell “Ni hao” — Chinese for hello — or loudly joke that she probably didn’t speak English.

Thao shared these anecdotes with a researcher and says the experience proved cathartic. “It felt so good to finally be heard,” she says.

Geneva Brown ’88, JD’93, a campus activist in the late 1980s as a member of both the Black Student Union and the Minority Coalition, hopes the Public History Project exhibit will inspire current students to keep working to improve the campus.

“There’s never a past tense to racism and discrimination,” says Brown, a faculty lecturer in criminology at DePaul University. “When students hear, especially nowadays, that we acknowledge the past and understand how it impacts our future, we’re creating an atmosphere where we’re not just giving lip service to diversity, we’re trying to do something about it. I think UW–Madison, with this project, can take the lead on that.”

When Lucchini Butcher gives presentations on campus about the Public History Project, she sometimes reminds people that UW–Madison bills itself as a world-class institution. Ultimately, the project can elevate, not diminish, UW–Madison’s reputation by making sure it lives up to its promise, she says.

“None of this means you have to love UW–Madison any less. You can critique the things you love. You can love something enough to want it to live up to your standards and your expectations.” •