Wisconsin Stories

It was a sunny afternoon in May 2020, and as the COVID-19 pandemic was raging across America, Dominic Pham, a Philosophy major at UW-Milwaukee, returned home from a demanding shift at his job. Most evenings, he prepared two packets of ramen and a pot of coffee. “It gave me a more conscious consideration to the […]

Maria Belke is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Belke graduated in May of 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in K-12 Theater Education. Belke paid for her education through scholarships, help from her parents, and student loans. Belke was excited to hear the Biden administration’s announcement on the potential student loan forgiveness plan.  “Loans […]

A native of Wisconsin, John Gardner worked hard throughout school to pay for his loans. Gardner said he never took time off and slowly chipped away at his student debt. Gardner’s hard work paid off, and he eliminated the loans. Gardner is now retired from selling insurance and lives in a house he built himself […]

Wisconsin borrowers who receive financial relief through the federal Student Loan Forgiveness plan will have to pay income taxes on the money they receive, costing some of those borrowers hundreds of dollars. Many have responded in opposition to the student loan forgiveness plan entirely. Wisconsin state law calling for income tax on the forgiveness plan […]

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 […]

Harrison Colby, 34, sits on his back porch in Riverwest, smoking a Camel Blue and looking out at his corner lot backyard. The previous owner’s crops have taken over the garden beds. There is a sandbox, but Colby doesn’t have any children. Three fruitless cherry trees line the broken-up concrete sidewalk. Colby says the yard, […]