A semester in the rear view mirror

Rather quietly, early Wednesday morning The Badger Herald published its last newspaper of the semester. On a personal front, this marks the halfway point of my editorship – for the university, a rather contentious semester that cannot be soon enough forgotten has nearly now come to a close.

I remember, as exams came to an end last spring, privately lamenting to a few close friends how utterly dull a news cycle I would be left with this fall. Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had been right.

It was a term marked by Luoluo Hong's sudden disappearance, Paul Barrows' sudden reappearance, the investigation into both administrators and the first signs of bruising around the University of Wisconsin's left eye.

Matters soon turned worse for the school, as the names Cohen, Coronado and Clark became staples of campus humiliation and a national media feeding frenzy. UW's administrators were engaged in harassment; UW's professors were engaged in molestation, pedophilic enticement and stalking.

And there was at least one pervert off campus too. The Overture Center saw attention shift away from its troubled financing to allegations of elevator-rides-turned-flashing-sessions.

By late October, local police and students settled their annual festive showdown with tear gas once again. But this time it looked like the men and women in blue may have been more aggressive than the young men and women in costume.

There were, of course, many more stories that graced the front page of the Herald and other publications alike. Some were positive, too many negative. It has been one of the worst semesters on record for the UW in recent memory and with exams now upon the university, it can't seem to end soon enough. Worse yet, as the paper's final editorial of the semester addresses, that end may be superficial in nature.

Much as I may have once privately lamented the idea of a quiet fall news cycle, I wish it had been so. The school – and, indeed, the city – has taken too many hits; many of which have been mentioned in this blog over time but not enumerated in this post.

Maybe – we can only hope – the spring will be better to UW and Madison.

Then again, the Herald has barely been out of print for 48 hours and already a list of leads to be investigated come January is piling up.