Wisconsin Stories

Marissa Ziefle was prepared for college. Her college-prep high school drilled academic excellence into students. When she started at UWM, college felt even easier than high school. But as she progressed, Ziefle grappled with a question that millions of students ask themselves each semester: What do I want to do with my life? What followed […]

President Biden has opened applications for his administration’s student loan forgiveness plan, but UWM students still have questions.  Education Data says that in Wisconsin, 727,400 residents have taken student loans. Many of them qualify for forgiveness.  The Student Loan Forgiveness program was announced by the Biden-Harris Administration on August 24 and set to open in […]

Imagine you are playing a game of chess. You are black and your opponent is white. To ensure fairness, the chess game has been assigned a gamekeeper, who is sporting your team’s black color. Before the match begins, the gamekeeper writes out all the plays for both you and your opponent in the order you […]

Hello, fellow Wisconsinites. Election Day is just around the corner, and if you are a college student like me, you may not have done much research on the candidates for Wisconsin governor. Most of my information on the two candidates has come from attack ads, so I am doing a deep dive into the two […]

The rift in Wisconsin politics sometimes feels like the space between life and death for UW-Milwaukee student Wylan Boyle. “One of the sides only kind of wants to kill me, versus the other side that really wants to kill me,” says Boyle. “If I’m voting, I’m voting for the side that is probably going to […]

Along Walnut Street in Milwaukee’s Walnut Hill neighborhood, some homes are decorated with trick-or-treat signs and pumpkins, some have wire grates over the windows, and one has bullet holes in the siding. At each one, canvassers with Power to the Polls, a Milwaukee-based get-out-the-vote organization left a flyer that said “Black Voters Matter” across the […]

Amanda Connelly has voted in one election in her life. After years of general disinterest towards the world of politics, the 21-year-old Milwaukee School of Engineering student arrived at the polls for the 2020 presidential election with the goal of removing Donald Trump from office. “I felt like I needed to do my part,” said […]

Emilie Lewis picks at the plant she is growing in her apartment. On her bookshelf are books for beginner gardeners. In her dining room are pots nursing basil, chives and tomatoes.  The budding herbs and vegetables sit under a violet grow light, a technique she learned from her grandma.  She picks off basil leaves meticulously, […]

Carmella D’Acquisto and her partner had been searching for their first home to purchase since 2019, and they were struggling to find the perfect house. “My partner and I did not have the greatest jobs and I still had a lot of student debt to pay, so the first place I reached out to was […]

Housing near campus is an essential aspect of student life for any university. As students often are unable to be fully employed, they benefit greatly from affordable housing. From Craigslist to Zillow to Apartments.com, rental listings for properties on Milwaukee’s Upper East Side are published regularly. However, a percentage of that housing is not plausible […]

Alexandra and her partner pay $1,200 per month for their daughter’s child care. That is more than the average cost of rent, mortgage, or in-state tuition in Milwaukee. “I would just hope that at some point changes get made where parents can get additional help, whether it’s from the government or assistance programs,” said Alexandra. […]

The youth vote could be what decides the outcome of the Wisconsin 2022 midterm elections.  In the 2020 election, the voting rate at UWM was 58.1%, According to the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE) campus report, the last couple of elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than 50,000 votes. Panther’s […]