wisconsin, long rich in water

IX DAYS BEFORE LABOR DAY, 9:50 A.M.,and Dave Baker is already sweating through his work shirt.Today’s projected high is ninety-two degrees, and theasphalt at Noah’s Ark Water Park in Wisconsin Dells isquickly filling with cars, each one disgorging pilgrims robedin towels, anointed in sunscreen. Baker pilots his cartamong the growing crowds with a task of singular impor-tance: prime the pump, turn the spigot, and keep the water

flowing. Entering the Jungle Rapids pumphouse, he flies from power boxto flow valves as the array of pumps and filters and PVC thrums to life.He shimmies down a ladder through a hole in the floor and the soundescalates. Then he’s gone, off to the next attraction.

When the park is finally at flood stage — five million gallons in thrall to recreation — Baker shows off one of the six on-site wells that make it all work.It’s remarkably small; in fact, the moving parts for “America’s Biggest WaterPark” probably wouldn’t fill an average house. Shear away the scaffolding and itsfiligree of turquoise fiberglass and you’re left with six holes, twelve inches wideand 150 feet deep. It’s a testament to the simplicity of the formula: water plusgravity equals fun plus profit.

I put my hand on the wellhead to feel the water surging within and ask Baker if he believes anyone at the park really thinks about where all this liquidrefreshment comes from.

“No, not really,” he replies.After all, what’s to think about? Wisconsin is seriously wet, with ample coast-

line along both the mighty Mississippi and two Great Lakes, a bounty of fifteenthousand inland lakes, thousands of riparian miles, endless soggy acres. What weknow about drought you could scribble on a Dells postcard and send to Denveror Los Angeles, signed Alfred E. Newman: “What, me worry?”

“It’s when you’re most complacent that you’re most vulnerable,” warns CurtMeine MS’83, PhD’88 of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters.For the better part of two years, Meine, along with his colleagues, Michael StrigelMS’94 and Shaili Pfeiffer MS’01, has helped shepherd a statewide brainstormcalled Waters of Wisconsin (WOW). Guided by an all-star committee, includingfive UW-Madison faculty members and ten alumni, the ongoing process hasinvolved thousands of citizens, and is painting a portrait of both promise and perilfor the state’s storied waters.

WINTER 2003 23

GOOD TO THE LASTGOOD TO THE LAST

DROP ?DROP ?

WISCONSIN, LONG RICH IN WATER, PONDERS A NEW ERA OF SCARCITY.

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At the foundation is the public trust doctrine embedded in the state’s consti-tution, which protects all navigablewaters for the public. This protection hasbeen fortified through 150 years of caselaw, and extends even to scenic beauty.

Beyond oft-cited Aldo Leopold ’36,John Muir x1863, and Gaylord Nelson’42, Wisconsin is also the birthplace oflimnology, or lake science, in the UnitedStates. The first limnology class wastaught in 1900 at the UW and, by somemeasures, Lake Mendota is the moststudied lake in the world. Appleton gen-erated the world’s first electricity fromfalling water. The Coon Valley watershedin southwestern Wisconsin pioneered soilconservation. State management of flood-plains, lake cleanup, groundwater quality,and surface water are all national models.And Wisconsin was the only state toenact additional wetland protections fol-lowing a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court deci-sion that opened 20 percent of previouslyprotected wetlands for development.

Despite this foundation of leadership,precedent, and law, water policy in Wis-consin resembles Frankenstein: manyworking parts, and a few areas of mon-strous dysfunction. For example, despiteconsumption advisories for hundreds ofstate fisheries, the state has been unableto regulate mercury emissions. ToddAmbs, who ran the environmental advocacy group River Alliance beforetaking on the water division of the state’sDepartment of Natural Resources underGovernor Jim Doyle ’67, sees the faultsin glaring relief.

“We have a train wreck coming injust a few years in some portions of Wisconsin,” he says. “In the Fox Valley,in Waukesha, we’re running out ofgroundwater. Thankfully, in 75 percentof the state that problem is many yearsaway. However, the general water quality challenges are immense.”

GROUNDEDJust outside of Eau Claire, the sandstoneface of Mount Simon rises nonchalantlyabove the river. Named after an early

settler of the region who, among otherthings, harnessed the local water power,Mount Simon is the barest geologicalhint of a massive sandstone formationthat underlies much of the Midwest. Therock is ancient, dating back some fivehundred million years to the Cambriandays of the early Paleozoic Era. What wenow call Wisconsin was located in moretropical climes, a shallow, coral-filled sea lapping sandy beaches and bays.Time passed: Cambrian to Ordovician to Silurian, Paleozoic to Mesozoic toCenozoic. The sandy sea bottom wasgradually covered and compressed intosandstone. In some ways, it’s still a sea,

a great underground sponge now filledwith billions of gallons of fresh water.

“It’s a wonderful aquifer,” says KenBradbury PhD’82, hydrogeologist forthe Wisconsin Geological and NaturalHistory Survey, part of UW Extension.“It’s a thick sequence of sandstones thatare very porous, very permeable, andvery extensive.” Ranging from eight hundred to two thousand feet thick, it ishundreds, even thousands, of years old,and there is a lot of it. Indeed, if youbrought all of Wisconsin’s groundwaterto the surface, it would cover the entirestate to a depth of 103 feet.

WINTER 2003 25

One of WOW’s more symbolicachievements was prodding officials into declaring 2003 the Year of Water inWisconsin, coinciding with the UnitedNations’s International Year of Fresh-water. But no proclamation can matchthe power unveiled when the rain won’tfall. Noah’s Ark may live by deluge, butelsewhere in the Dells, the grass is a serebrown. It barely rained in August, andmany farms in the southern part of thestate are officially in drought. The Wis-consin is more a river of sand than water.Lake Michigan’s shoreline is approach-ing historic lows. Waukesha’s water isradioactive, and a rancorous state legisla-ture is slated to draw up new groundwa-ter legislation this fall.

Scarcity is an unsettling notion in a state where water has always beentaken for granted. But for the foresee-able future, it’s the dominant paradigmin most of the world. Water can bothcreate and destroy; the wisdom to benefit from its power comes only fromfollowing its course.

“With water, there are always newconnections,” says Meine. “You cannever fully account for them all, knowabout them all, or predict them all. Youcan’t deal with water issues in isolation.”

WATER MARKSThe next time you flush an old toilet —the kind that flushes with authority —consider that you’ve just used up all thewater that the World Health Organiza-tion says you need for the day. The UNis a little more generous, allowing anabsolute daily minimum of 13.2 gallons.

That’s fifty liters — five for drinking, tenfor preparing food, fifteen for bathing,and twenty for sanitation and hygiene.Still, millions of people in countries suchas Gambia, Haiti, Somalia, Mali, andCambodia get by on fewer than threegallons daily. Me, I’ve used about fiftygallons today, counting the laundry,dishes, cooking dinner, a shower, and our low-flush toilet. A dairy cow needsthirteen to fifty gallons daily, dependingon her output. The manufacture of a silicon wafer requires three thousand.

If you live in Wisconsin, or some-place else where thirst is not yet an issue,consider yourself lucky. Worldwide:• 1.1 billion people do not have access

to potable water.• 2.4 billion people do not have

adequate sanitation facilities.• Water-borne diseases fill half of all

hospital beds and kill one child everyeight seconds.

• Those of us in rich countries use tentimes more water than citizens ofpoor nations, who often pay rates ten times higher.These problems are not expected

to get better. As a report by the BBCrecently put it, “The present is dire: thefuture looks so grim it must be entirelyunmanageable.”

Water issues in the United Statesaren’t yet that grim, but water is clearlybecoming a high-profile concern inmany places:• The East is coming out of a major

drought, while the already arid West has been over-dry for nearly a decade. July was the hottest anddriest in the Southwest in 109 years.

• Florida, Alabama, and Georgia fightover allocation of the ChattahoocheeRiver. Virginia and Maryland bickerover the Potomac.

• Water-short California, which produces about half of the nation’sproduce, lost 15 percent of its yearlyColorado River allocation when itfailed to meet a negotiation deadline.

• New York City holds its breath as along overdue third tunnel designed tosafeguard its ancient supply lines isyears behind schedule.Sitting lakeside with UW planning

professor Stephen Born MS’68, PhD’70,the world doesn’t seem quite so dry. Ariver rat by vocation and avocation, Bornis approaching retirement with a fixedgaze on the mating habits of those aquaticinsects favored by trout. What keeps him in the classroom is a desire to helprevamp the state’s outlook on water. Withsome interference from a cool Terracebreeze, Born relaxes into his pipe, andpops the bubble: “We’re coming to a timewhen — even in wet climates — we’regoing to have to start looking at urbanwater management,” he warns. “We’regoing to have to give much more atten-tion to conservation, to recycling, to aug-mentation of flows. We can’t talk aboutmanaging groundwater without talkingabout managing surface water, and quantity is related to quality, and prettysoon it becomes a conundrum, becauseeverything is connected to everythingelse. But how the hell do you manage it?”

It’s a question that has vexed many.Wisconsin offers a good example of howeven abundance requires stewardship,forethought, investment, and innovation.

24 ON WISCONSIN

“We have a train wreck coming in just a few years in some

portions of Wisconsin. In the Fox Valley, in Waukesha,

we’re running out of groundwater. Thankfully, in 75 percent

of the state that problem is many years away. However, the

general water quality challenges are immense.”

JEFF MILLER

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An illustration: Last year Wisconsinapproved some of the strictest runoffstandards in the country, and has begunto invest $65 million annually for tenyears to meet those standards. But givencurrent growth patterns — the location,housing density, and design of newdevelopment — that $650 million invest-ment will only maintain water quality. If a currently besieged smart-growth lawgets fully implemented, then the statemight see gains in water quality.

Individual homeowners may be able to do more to alleviate the problemjust by changing the way they garden.“Everything is landscaped to move wateroff of somebody’s lot as quickly as possi-ble,” says Nancy Frank ’77, a greeninfrastructure specialist at UW-Milwau-kee. If people started to see the value ofkeeping some or all of that water on site,they might begin to realize how waterand land are intertwined.

“For too long it’s been hidden, [so]we don’t see the connection immedi-ately,” Frank says. “We see these gratesin the street, and we know that the rainwater goes down the grate, but then wehave no idea where it goes.”

A TALE OFTWO CONFLICTSTwo particular battles shed light on thepolitics of Wisconsin’s water. In 1985, theU.S. Army Corps of Engineers extendedregulatory protection to so-called iso-lated wetlands, arguing that even if theydid not drain into a larger system, theywere connected by the migratory birdsthat used them. In January 2001, theU.S. Supreme Court struck down thisadditional protection, opening an esti-mated one million acres of wetlands todevelopment in Wisconsin alone. Thoughdevelopers took quick advantage, conser-vationists of every stripe swung intoaction. Within four months, both housesof the legislature acted unanimously toprotect these wetlands in Wisconsin.

This kind of consensus was conspicu-ously absent when Perrier came prospect-ing for a new source of spring water for

its Ice Mountain label. The first site prof-fered by state development officials wasjust downstream from the Mecan SpringsNatural Area, which the DNR had beensafeguarding for years. When wordleaked out, the reaction was strongly negative, and Perrier wisely backed off.Hundreds of other wells of similar capac-ity already operate in Wisconsin, but bythe time Perrier was through studying BigSpring in Adams County, the oppositionwas intense enough to scare the companyto Michigan.

Perrier essentially became a scape-goat, a victim of our failure to compre-hensively manage water, argues planningprofessor Born. “Perrier is not an issue in

and of itself,” he says. “It’s a tip of an iceberg that speaks to the inadequacy in how we manage groundwater.”

To effectively make decisions in thefuture, he says, the state needs a largerframework that recognizes all of Wiscon-sin’s waters as a complete system. “Notjust an ecological system,” he explains,“but a competing system of users, a com-peting system of values, with people aspart of the equation. The complexity issuch that you can’t solve the problemswithout dealing with it as an integratedsystem. How can we fashion our institu-tions, our rules, our policies, to addressthese kinds of complex questions?”

WINTER 2003 27

This might seem an endless supply,but in southeast Wisconsin, it’s beingdrained faster than the rain can replaceit. Groundwater levels have droppedfour hundred to five hundred feet duringthe last century, and are now decliningsix to seven feet a year. The deeper a wellgoes, the more expensive it is to pump.And Waukesha and nearly fifty otherWisconsin communities have discoveredanother cost: the deepest reaches of theaquifer contain dangerously high quanti-ties of dissolved radium. The Environ-mental Protection Agency has orderedthe city to clean up its water.

According to Ambs, warped marketsignals help drive this emerging ground-water crisis: the more water that utilitiespump, the more revenue they generate.“This is a fundamental flaw in an age ofincreasingly scarce resources,” he argues.

“It’s not an acute disaster. It’s anincremental disaster,” adds Bradbury.“It’s been pretty much every city and vil-lage out for itself, and that’s not a veryefficient way to use the aquifer. The wellsare sited for all the wrong reasons: wherethe city happens to be able to buy someland, where the city is planning to grow,and where the boundary is — none ofwhich has anything to do with thehydraulics of groundwater.” Regionalgroundwater management, used inFlorida to prevent saltwater encroach-ment, could optimize water use, savemoney, and improve everybody’s waterquality, he says.

But Waukesha has rejected thisapproach, asking instead for a pipelineto Lake Michigan to draw twentymillion gallons a day. It’s easy to see

the temptation: over the horizon lies afull 20 percent of the world’s usablefreshwater. There’s just one problem:Waukesha drains to the Mississippi, notthe Great Lakes. Under the Great Lakescharter of 1985, the pipeline must beapproved by the governors of eight lakestates and two Canadian provinces,who must sign off on diversions of fivemillion gallons or more. A significantamendment to the charter, called Annex2001, is not complete, but it is expectedto require review of even smaller diver-sions, and that significant withdrawalsbe accompanied by offsetting ecologicalrestoration.

Waukesha’s proposal was met withoutrage in Milwaukee, where the averagecitizen is already wondering about thestate of the lakes. Summer beach closingsweigh heavily, as do low lake levels.Anders Andren, director of UW-Madi-son’s Sea Grant Institute, says levels arecyclical, and beyond our control. Indeed,during the last four thousand years, thelakes have been as much as eighteen feethigher and perhaps fourteen feet lower.“We cannot really change the water levelsin any meaningful way,” he says.

The good news in the Great Lakes isthat the toxic problems of the past areabating. What remains are primarilylegacy pollutants, leaching from forty-one so-called areas of concern, such asthe lode of PCBs in the Fox River andGreen Bay.

Of more urgent concern, saysAndren, is the establishment of morethan 160 invasive species in the basin. In this game of ecological musical chairs,the zebra mussel is already old news,

with the even more troublesome quaggamussel now advancing in Lake Michi-gan. Every time a powerful new specieswashes through the lakes, it rebuildsthem in its own image.

“They completely change the flow of energy, the flow of food, the flow ofcontaminants,” says Andren.

As big as they are — it takes 191years for Lake Superior to replace itswater, and ninety-nine years for LakeMichigan — the Great Lakes are vulner-able to the smallest things: the “just-in-case” fertilizer we put on our crops andlawns, where we pile our leaves. That’sbecause no matter how small theseactions, your neighbors are probablydoing them, too, and it all adds up. Thispollution is called non-point, becauseinstead of one big, bad pipe, the pollutioncomes from everywhere.

“Our next big, big water-qualityproblem is to try to get some handle on[this] problem,” says Andren. “That’sreally difficult, because we have to makesome painful changes in agriculture andin the way we keep our lawns.” But if we don’t, he warns, the same problemsthat plague smaller lakes like Mendota— algal blooms, some of them even toxic — could bedevil Lake Michigan.

Non-point pollution is both behav-ioral and systemic: it’s not only how youtake care of your yard, but where it is,how big it is, and how well your commu-nity was designed to accommodate thewater that flows off asphalt and rooftops.

“To take care of water, you’ve got totake care of land use,” says DNR’s ToddAmbs, referring to sprawl. “It really is allconnected.”

26 ON WISCONSIN

As big as they are — it takes 191 years for Lake Superior to

replace its water, and ninety-nine years for Lake Michigan — the

Great Lakes are vulnerable to the smallest things: the “just-in-

case” fertilizer we put on our crops and lawns, where we pile our

leaves ... no matter how small these actions ... it all adds up.

Continued on page 62

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(2)

Regionalism is the only thing that can work, Born argues. “It’s like having a problem in a marriage, and saying, ’I’m going to deal with it by myself,’ ” he laughs. The solution isn’t necessarily centralization and top-down decision-making, he says, but “finding ways ofcoordinating, communicating, resolvingconflicts so that we can share both thebounty and the dilemmas.

“Conflict management is ultimatelythe key to water management.”

In an era of fiscal drought, it doesn’thelp that water will be more expensive.Since 1997, budget fights and shortfallshave taken 50 percent of the general-fund money used to enforce state waterlaws, even as regulatory tasks havegrown to include the 1996 revision of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and new state stormwater standards.Additionally, the nationwide repair orreplacement of drinking and wastewater

facilities may cost as much as $1 trillionduring the next two decades, accordingto the Environmental Protection Agency.

AFTER THE RAINThe rain finally began to fall in southernWisconsin in mid-September, bringingmore than four inches during a singleweekend — although, even with that,rainfall for the year was still be belownormal. Friends, neighbors, andstrangers all talked about the rain, andpeople walked the streets without slick-ers or umbrellas. More than once, I wentoutside, raised my face to the sky, and let the water wash away the worry. I felta palpable weight lift from my heart,knowing I could relax about our trees,our potatoes, our lawns, and the stagnantYahara River. Within twenty-four hoursafter the rain, everything shifted threeshades deeper into green, and the soundof the leaves rustling in the wind took onsofter, more luxuriant tones.

In dry country, rain is usually thiskind of metamorphic event, as practicallyevery living thing crowds through thewindow of opportunity and excess. Herein Wisconsin, the land of exuberantwaterparks and fifteen thousand lakes, it felt like that kind of rain, signaling achange beyond the weekend forecast.But did it change how we think aboutwater? Follow the water, and it will provide new answers.

“You’re always synthesizing withwater because you’re drawing connec-tions,” says the Wisconsin Academy’sCurt Meine. “Can we find a new way to do things? Can we find a way to break out of the political battles of recentyears? We have huge resources of peopleand scientific information. Can we bringthe best science in the state to bear?”

Erik Ness lives in Madison, not far from the Yahara River.He writes about environment and science for Discover,Preservation, Wisconsin Trails, and Isthmus.

62 ON WISCONSIN

Good to the Last Drop?Continued from page 27

Celebrating 40 Years of WAA Travel

BOWL BOUND?Right now, there’s only one sure thing: theWisconsin Alumni Association® will takeyou to post-season play. Bowl tours include:

■ Admission to the official UW pep rally

■ Pre-game BADGER HUDDLE® tickets

■ Air-and-hotel package options

Save your spot now!uwalumni.com/bowltours

Jeff

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28 ON WISCONSIN

Porter Butts disliked pinball.

The legendary Wisconsin Union founder and director resisted putting the popularmachines into Memorial Union because he felt that they compromised the Union’shighest mission: providing productive and satisfying uses for leisure time.

Pinball, to his mind, was a game without skill that cut off interaction with others.After all, the Union’s motto is “Societate Crescit Lumen” or “Light [learning]enhanced by human relationships.”

“It was like the English department recommending comic books or dime novels,”he said in 1979, although he eventually relented after learning that the machinesraked in fifty to sixty thousand dollars in quarters. Butts ’24, MA’36 decided that themoney could help fund other worthy Union pursuits.

The love-hate affair with coin-operated machines is just one of the quirky bits of lore that have made the Wisconsin Union — including the seventy-five-year-oldMemorial Union and its younger sibling, Union South — what it is today. On thisanniversary, On Wisconsin dove headlong into the Union’s eminent history, with theassistance of the Union, UW Archives, and the archives of the Daily Cardinal, BadgerHerald, Capital Times, and Wisconsin State Journal. The list here is by no means comprehensive or complete, but just a few points of light from the Union’s history of nurturing human relationships.

At the three-quarter- century mark for Memorial Union, we offer seventy-five things we bet you didn’t know about the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s “living room.”

BY JOHN LUCAS

WINTER 2003 29

1. The favorite meals of UW-Madison students, as servedby the Wisconsin Union, circaOctober 1947: hamburgers,spaghetti, baked beans, porkchops, pot roast, and Swiss steak.

8. The late Lewis “Bus” Toppwas the Union’s one and onlybarber for more than fifty years.Topp noticed a decline in busi-ness as many men wore their hairlonger in the 1960s and 1970s.“I don’t think it’ll ever go back towhere it was, because wives andgirlfriends go for this long hair,”he said in a 1974 interview withthe State Journal. “It’ll take someguys with prestige to get the ballrolling on short hair again.”

12. Gemütlichkeit: German fora feeling of well-being or conge-niality, the principle on which theRathskeller was founded.

4. � 574 � Number of “sun-burst” chairs on Union Terrace.

6. � 1,000 � Number of gold-fish Hoofers dumped into thefountain on Library Mall in 1978as part of “The Great GoldfishGiveaway.” No figures were avail-able on how many survived.

11. No bugs here:The Union’s kitchens are so clean, it was said in a 1947 StateJournal story, that theytypically carry a bacteriacount “as low as one,”while other restaurants averagebetween five hundred and tenthousand.

3. Only in Wisconsin (andmaybe Germany): For a timebeginning in 1934, on theRathskeller’sannual“CheeseNight,” afifty-poundwheel of cheese wasmoved into the center of the room and putunder a spotlight. A chefcut free slices in honor of the German tradition of consumingbeer with cheese.

5. � 5,091,294 � Number of people who passed throughMemorial Union and UnionSouth’s doors in 2002, an aver-age of 97,910 people per week.

7. Until the early1980s, most piecesin the Union’s artcollection could be rented for fiftycents per semesteras part of the “Art-to-Go” program.

A gallery showing,1970.

2. At the 1939 World’s Fair inSan Francisco, the WisconsinUnion Theater was voted “one of the twenty-five mostdistinguished contemporarybuildings in America” in anarchitectural competition. SinclairLewis called the building the“most beautiful theater with themost beautiful site in the world.”

13. During the campaign to build Memorial Union, UW President Glenn Frank said, “The Memorial Union build-ing will give us a ‘living room’ that will convert the university from a ‘house’ of learning into a ‘home’ of learning. It is worth any sacrifice that we may be called upon to make in order to bring it to com-pletion.” Roughly half of UW-Madison students in the 1920s pledged fifty dollars or more (the equivalent of more than five hundred bucks in today’s dollars) to pay for a building that they would never get to use as students.

If you build it: from a 1921 funding campaign.

Waiting for Union food, 1949.

9. ON THE BRINK, PART I:

The Union’s Music and Entertainment Committee bookedthe Tar Babies in 1990. Their opening act, a little knowngroup called Smashing Pumpkins, was paid only seventy-fivedollars for the gig.

10. � 580 � Numberof annual events in the Wisconsin UnionTheater, which draw127,000 patrons.

Good cheer at the Union Bash, 2001.

15. In 1932, the ping-pong room in Memorial Union wasrenamed the “Katskeller” by theWomen’s Affairs Committee toprotest the male-only Rathskeller.During World War II, whenfemale students outnumberedmales by nearly four to one, the“men only” signs came down.

22. Intercollegiatebilliards: Foundedat Memorial Unionin the 1930s, thegame was firstplayed by telegraph,and only later face-to-face.

24. Bermuda shorts wereunwelcome dress in MemorialUnion until the late 1950s.

17. Among the Union issuesinvestigated by the alumni associ-ation and state legislature in the 1930s: “Do you cook withWisconsin butter or Crisco?”and “Why does the Unionhave dining rooms competingwith private restaurants?” The Union Council respondedthat such questions were“implicit in the nature of a democratic institution and neces-sary to its effective functioning.”

25. � 780,000 � Number ofpopcorn kernels popped in anaverage week at the Stiftskeller(which amounts to six hundredpounds of popcorn).

26. Not everyone appreciatedMemorial Union’s architec-ture, designed by ArthurPeabody to evoke the feel ofItalian lakeside palaces. In 1932,one fellow architect slammedthe concept, saying: “Yes, itspeaks Italian, extremely badItalian, and very difficult tounderstand.” The critic’s name:Frank Lloyd Wright.

14. School ties: Today, one outof every five UW-Madison alumnitakes out a Union membershipwithin a year of leaving Madison.The Wisconsin Union has morethan eighty thousand lifetimemembers worldwide.

23. Hula fever: Classes in hulawere offered twice weekly inMemorial Union in 1951.

16. � 24 cents � Average price of meals at Memorial Unionduring the Great Depression,when the Union Council voted to reduce prices to help studentsafford to eat.

21. Rufus Rollback: The ficti-tious chef of the 1950s, who cutfood prices to pre-World War IIlevels on certain menu itemseach day. In 1952, between ninethousand and ten thousandmeals were being served daily.

19. Women in the picture: TheUnion had its first female presi-dent in 1943–1944. Also in1943, the Union hired a femalestudent to run the projector inthe Play Circle Theater. She wasbelieved to be one of only threefemale projectionists in the coun-try at that time.

A poster from when movies were movies.

Fellow well met: a Tudor dinner, 2002.

The Rathskeller, 1941.

Corner pocket: billiards in the 1930s.

18. The Union’s firsttwenty-five years weredramatized in a colorfilm titled Living Roomof a University. Theeffort won a HollywoodScreen Producer‘s GuildAward.

A happy twenty-fifth in 1953.

30 ON WISCONSIN

20. Ever visited in January?: In 1948, Time magazinepraised Memorial Union, saying: “It’s almost impossible notto have a good time at Wisconsin.”

WINTER 2003 31

35. After visiting the legendaryStiftskeller St. Peter in Salzburg,Austria, Butts named MemorialUnion’s Stiftskeller, whichmeans “cellar of the founders.”

39. Before the Union, there wasDad Morgan’s, a State Streetmalted-milk shop and billiardshall where campus men congre-gated in the late 1920s. Despitethe fact that the Union essentiallyput Morgan out of business, hedonated a famous oak table tothe Rathskeller, where it wasprominently displayed.

37. The wreck of the QueenAnn: The Union was once hometo a “fleet” of tour boats: theDana and the Queen Ann. Thelatter sank in a storm in 1972,and the former was sold soonafter, when it was determinedthe Union couldn’t afford to continue operating the boat.

32. The Union was officially designated as the “Division ofSocial Education” by the Boardof Regents in 1935, in accor-dance with Butts’s ambition tosee the Union serve as a focalpoint for out-of-class learning.

28. � 1,000 � Gallons in theworld’s largest milkshake, mixedin 1978 for the fifty-year anniver-sary of the Union. No word onhow many straws it took to slurpup the drink.

34. Fasching, a German drink-ing festival akin to Mardi Gras,was held at Memorial Unionannually between 1959 and1980. The Daily Cardinallamented its end with the head-line, “No Drunkfest at the Unionthis Year.”

40. � 1933 � Year theRathskeller began serving 3.2beer, following the repeal of Prohibition, becoming the firstcollege union in the nation to do so. The brew was legally classified as “non-intoxicating.”

41. “Fewer Walls, MoreBridges”: Theme under whichUnion South opened on Novem-ber 10, 1971. The building wasdedicated as a peace memorial.

29. � 42 � Number of yearsPorter Butts served the Union,before retiring in 1968. TedCrabb, previously a member ofButts’s staff and director of theUW-Milwaukee Union, becamethe second director, but served a mere thirty-three years.

38. “Save theStones”: Rallying cry of the Daily Cardinal,trying to save the roughflagstones of the Ter-race from renovationduring the mid-1960s.Notorious for tippingtables and turningankles, the stones werereplaced by cut stoneand colored cement.

30. � 6 � Number of femalestudents appearing nude in a1967 production of Peter Pan in the Fredric March Play CircleTheater, which was canceled dueto campus outcry.

27. Luminaries: Martin LutherKing, Jr., John F. Kennedy, RobertF. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt,Jawaharlal Nehru, Saul Bellow,and Carl Sandburg, among others, appeared or spoke atMemorial Union.

33. � 14 � Years before Memo-rial Union opened that the UW’sUnion Board helped found theAssociation of College Unions.Wisconsin’s student presidentreturned from that group’s first national conference withrenewed determination to have a dedicated Union building oncampus.

Let them eat pancake: Porter Buttsserves up flapjacks in 1950.

Life in the Rat, 1959.

31. ON THE BRINK, PART II: In spring 1960, Madison authorand historian Ronald Radosh was friendly with an aspiringfolk singer who frequently played at a State Street coffee-house called The Pad. One day, Radosh and the singer sattogether on the Union Terrace, playing guitar.

The singer: “I’m going to be as big a star as Elvis Presley.”Radosh: “Singing Woody Guthrie songs?”The singer’s name: Bob Dylan.

36. Taming of the Shrew was the openingact for the Wisconsin Union Theater onOctober 9, 1939. The performance, head-lined by Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, waswritten up by the New York Times.

32 ON WISCONSIN

55. The name Memorial Unionwas chosen when fundraising forthe new campus student centerwas insufficient to complete thejob. Advocates for the campuscenter joined with those promot-ing a World War I memorial,hence the Union’s designation asa “living memorial.” Purdue andIndiana Universities followed suit.

50. The name “Hoofers”was established in 1931from a similar group atDartmouth known as the“Heelers.” At the UW,“Heelers” served asapprentices to the upper-classmen “Hoofers” whomanaged the outdooractivities group.

58. � 10 � Number of wheelsfor making ceramic pottery in theUnion’s craftshop, which alsoincludes woodworking tools, adarkroom, an art metal shop,and equipment for making batik.

42. � 27,000 � Campus roomreservations scheduled by theUnion’s central reservations officeper year.

53. � 110 � Number of collegesand universities from around thenation that sought assistancefrom Butts in establishing theirown unions. In 1964, he visitedtwenty universities in Asia to aidin the development of theirunion programs.

48: The 770 Club, so named forthe Union’s old address at 770Langdon Street, was the nation’sfirst collegiate nightclub in 1933.It lives on at Union South as Club770, an alcohol-free entertain-ment venue.

44. The Royal Order of Catering Waiters: An elite teamof Union waiters known for theirspeed, timing, and use of handsignals. “If the backfield of thefootball team can shift and runlike those waiters,” remarkedfootball coach Ivy Williamson in1949, “we won’t have to worryon the football field.”

54. � 8 � Number of blind students who enrolled in a special Union ballroom danceclass offered in 1940, believed to be one of the first of its kind.

47. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzger-ald, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis,Sergei Rachmaninoff, VladimirHorowitz, Duke Ellington, ItzhakPerlman, Wynton and BranfordMarsalis, Uta Hagen, HenryFonda, Anthony Quinn, and PaulRobeson, among many others, all performed as part of Union Theater-sponsored programs.

56. � 700 � Number of puppetsbrought for a performance bythe Salzburg Marionette Theatrein 1951.

49. Bummelling: A German university tradition dictating thatstudents must lounge, dance,drink, and sing before gettingdown to serious study. “DieRathskeller Bummel” was a popu-lar promotion for a time in 1939.

51. � 1,400 � Gallons of milkserved weekly in the Rathskellerin 1967, compared to 190 gallons of beer.

57. “Reunion at the Union”:Title of a popular song written by two Truax Field airmen duringWorld War II. The Union pub-lished the song and sold outalmost immediately. During thewar years, the Union neverclosed for one day.

52. “The Battle of Beer andWine,” a mural in the Stiftskeller,is modeled after one in Munich,Germany. Painted by Milwaukeeartist Kurt Schaldach in 1978, the full verse (translated fromGerman) goes: “When wine andbeer make war on each other,who will win and who will lose?”

Hoofers boats on the lake.

Wheel away: the craftshop, 2000.

Wisconsin welcome: Memorial Uniongreeting desk, 1951.

“

“

46. It is the custom here at the Union that he whoeats and drinks also pays for it. Such a guest isdear and cherished, who promptly pays forwhat he gets.”— Translation, from German, of the Rathskeller motto.

43. ON THE BRINK,PART III: Ever heard of

the Indigo Girls, theMighty Mighty Bosstones,the BoDeans, or Phish? Not many people hadwhen those acts played the Unions during theirearly, pre-fame days.

45. The late artist James Watrous ’31, MA’33, PhD’39, whopainted Memorial Union’s murals of Paul Bunyan from 1933 to1936, had to return several times to repair the eye of Babe, theblue ox, which was cut out by souvenir-seeking students.

Babe blue: James Watrous creates the Bunyan murals.

Tooting the horn for Louis Armstrong,1957.

75. All of this history and more is being preserved by the Wisconsin Union and the UW Archives. An ever-expanding collection of photographs is now available online; visithttp://webcat.library.wisc.edu:3200/ and click on, “Select a database,” then “The University of Wisconsin Collection.”

72. � 1,300 � Pieces in the permanent Union Art Collection,first established upon the open-ing of Memorial Union as one ofthe first collegiate art galleries.Today, more than 75 percent of the works are on display inMemorial Union or Union South.

65. I will have a dream: InMartin Luther King, Jr.’s 1962speech at the Union Theater, heproclaimed, “We’ve come a longway, but we’ve got a long, longway to go” in the struggle forintegration. He told segregation-ists, “We will wear you down byour capacity to suffer.”

63. The original Union Terracechairs were made of wicker, farless sturdy than the current “sun-burst” variety. However, whenthe company that manufacturedthe metal chairs went bankrupt,the Memorial Union BuildingAssociation purchased the tooland die sothat chairscould bemade inthe future.

60. � 97 � Number of Picassoetchings displayed in 1959. Theworks of other artists, includingDiego Rivera and Georgia O’Keeffe, were also displayed.

69. � 1,500 � Number of students to volunteer at more than twenty sitesaround the country as partof the Wisconsin UnionDirectorate’s AlternativeBreaks program.

74. During the early 1950s,Oxford Union-style debateswere held regularly. The firstfocused on a resolution stating,“The University of Wisconsinwould have achieved greaterfame if women had beenexcluded.” The women won.

71. Memorial Union hosted the university’s first lecture-discussion series on courtshipand marriage in 1938.

68. � 80 � Number of gallons oftomato and chicken soup — themost popular choices at the time— produced each day by Unionkitchens in the late 1940s andearly 1950s.

70. � 4 � Number of futureOlympians who trained on theold Hoofers ski jump on MuirKnoll in the early 1930s.

62. Barefoot: Joan Baez performed, sans shoes, before a sellout Union Theater crowd in the early 1960s. The Daily Cardinal raved: “Joan Baez —soon this is all we will need to say when this plaintive little girlpresents an evening of folk songsabout frustrated love.”

Students at a Habitat forHumanity project, 2000.

73. � 900 � Students employedannually by the Wisconsin Union.

Flipped out: students at work inthe Union kitchens.

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“

“

66. “I found the students at Wisconsin alert,intelligent, and uninhibited. It was a most stimulating meeting for me.” — then-Senator John F. Kennedy, after his May 16, 1958, speech at the Union Theater.

64. $135,200: Projected annualtake in quarters from “DanceDance Revolution,” the Unions’most popular arcade game.

67. “Let’s Dig”: The drive toraise money for Memorial Unionwas the first university effort tosolicit pledges from alumni. Priorto the drive, alumni were neverasked, as they expected tax dollars to fund university needs.

A 1935 drawing of the Union Theater.

59. The Union Theater wing was financed with$585,000 from aloan, $266,000 fromthe Public WorksAdministration, and$135,000 from giftsand Union operatingsurplus.

Union pledge plea, 1921.

HISTORICAL PHOTOS COURTESY OF UW ARCHIVES; OTHER PHOTOS BY JEFF MILLER, STEPHANIE JUDGE AND

MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS

WINTER 2003 33

“

61.“The old Rat is dead!” — Editorial in the Daily Cardinalin the early 1960s, after theRathskeller food counter was converted to self-service and “hostesses” began checking ages and asking patrons to take their feet off tables.

they were in the twenties, thirties, andforties. Today, it’s grab-and-go dining,and we’ve changed to meet that. I can’ttell you right now what the dining prefer-ence will be in ten years, but we will beready to serve it.

In entertainment, perhaps in 1939,when the Union Theater was built, clas-sical entertainment was in its heyday.This type of programming still has animportant part to play in what we offerto the campus, but it’s probably not central to the mission of the theater any-more. As campus interests change, thetype of entertainment will change, butour commitment to offering first-classquality entertainment will still be there.The same might be true of Hoofers. Theski jump came down off Muir Knoll inthe thirties and forties, and that’s notthere anymore. Now we have scuba div-ing and horseback riding. Those are justa few examples.

What kinds of physical changes do you envision for the Union buildings?

We’re very close to finishing an overalllong-range facility master plan that takesinto account the rehabilitation, restora-tion, and expansion of Memorial Unionand Union South and begins to ask thequestion about the possibility of otherlocations and the possibility of building athird union someday.

When you look at walking distancesfrom our two main facilities, you begin tosee there are sections of campus that arenot within a ten-minute walk. That getsus thinking about whether we need anadditional location to reach the areas ofcampus we don’t currently touch.

In addition, our facilities and physicalsurroundings need to change to meet current needs, tastes, and desires. Theymust be more tech-savvy than they wereten or twenty years ago. How people proceed through a building is differentfrom how it was ten or twenty years ago,so corridors and wayfinding and pathsand lighting and those types of thingsmust continue to be improved.

When Memorial Union was built, itserved a campus community of eight

thousand people. Union South wasadded at a time when the campus com-munity — including students, facultyand staff — was close to forty thousandpeople. We now serve a campus commu-nity of sixty thousand, and that doesn’tbegin to add in the Madison community.We are beginning to outgrow our facili-ties. Through the master plan, we’veexamined to what extent we can addfacilities for additional meeting space,entertainment space, and food space. AtMemorial [Union], we’re hemmed in ina lot of ways, so we’ll need creative solu-tions to add space. [Union] South’s thesame way. We’re looking at under-ground options and the possibility ofother ways to expand.

What about a proposal for the west end of campus?

Currently, the Union doesn’t really servethe west end of campus well, as far asbeing within close walking distance. Thestudents, faculty, and staff who study andwork on the far western edge of campusneed convenient dining opportunities,meeting rooms, possible program space tosupport conferences, student organizationspace. A new west-campus Union could,out of all three facilities, serve a gradschool population more directly than theother two, which would make it some-what unique.

A master plan is a long-range document.How do you prioritize which improve-ments come first?

The consulting team that worked with the Union to develop a master plan hasorganized the elements of the plan intowhat we’d call “doable chunks.” Begin-ning with the seventy-fifth anniversarythrough the hundredth anniversary, inthat twenty-five year span, if we weregoing to do something every three to fiveyears, what would it be? How would wego about raising the funds for each ofthose initiatives? We’re looking at differ-ent funding models — our own opera-tions, plus some level of support fromstudents, as well as donor support.

34 ON WISCONSIN

As Memorial Union began marking its

seventy-fifth anniversary, writer John

Lucas talked with Mark Guthier, above,

who in November 2001 succeeded

Theodore (Ted) Crabb ’54, becoming

only the third director of the Wisconsin

Union. Guthier came from Indiana

University, where he served as assistant

director of its college union for nearly

ten years. He talks about the Wisconsin

Union’s history — and what the UW’s

beloved institution will reach for next.

The Union’s Next Era

What do you think has been the Union’sbiggest accomplishment?

The greatest accomplishment for the Wisconsin Union over the last seventy-five years is what it will continue to do forthe next seventy-five years, and that’s tobe the one place that students, faculty,staff, alumni, and Madison communitymembers all have in common— the onehome for UW-Madison. And it does thatin a way unlike any other college union inthe country. We’ll always be about bring-ing all those constituents together. That’sone of the Union’s great strengths.

In what ways do you think the Unionwill change or evolve?

Sometimes we think of students as thepiece that changes the most. We’ve alsoseen the needs and tastes of facultychange over the years. For example, faculty dining clubs aren’t the big things

JEFF MILLER

How could Union South become moreintegrated into the campus community?

The key to [Union] South is to think of itas a wonderful union in its own right andto do something there that allows it tostand on its own and not be compared toMemorial. It needs to have its own senseof place and identity. Something thatmakes it a point of destination, like theTerrace. It also needs to be more trans-parent — the master plan includes ideasfor opening up the space so that you cansee the activities going on inside.

Do you have any “high concept” ideasfor Union South at this point? A coffeehouse-cyber café concept is onething that’s being talked about. Instead oftrying to replicate the Rathskeller, let’s gothe other direction and have it spill outonto an urban terrace and amphitheater.

How about Memorial Union?One of the things we want to do withMemorial is to renovate spaces and bringthem back to the aesthetic quality theyhad when the building first opened. Oneexample of that is what we did with therenovation of the Main Lounge, thanks toa gift from the Class of 1950. That

project, which included adding central airconditioning into the space, was not somuch a historic preservation project, buta historic rehabilitation. That is a goodexample of what we want to have happenthroughout the building.

Another thing is that the mainentrance used to be the entrance off thesecond floor. People went in that way and down into the building. The Rathwas in the basement. But that’s changedover the years. Can we design entrancesthat are grand, much as you got whenyou entered on the second floor? Can thisbe done in the other two entrances offLangdon and Park Streets?

The redo of the Lakefront Café — soon to be called Lakefront on Langdon— will be the most visible changeimmediately, right?

Lakefront on Langdon will be an exam-ple of what we hope to do with all of ourfood service outlets, which will be tomodernize them and make them morecustomer friendly. It’ll be a “market” concept, and we’ll be able to change ourfood concepts more quickly — withouthaving to wait ten or twenty years to gutthe whole thing again.

What big-ticket items could be in thefuture for Memorial Union?

One example would be the WisconsinUnion Theater wing — there’s a possibil-ity of adding space on the north side tosupport receptions and catering. Or aballroom with a wonderful view of thelake, in addition to a new entrance on thesouth side and an expanded box office.

There are ideas for expanding theTerrace to go from the Union across theEast Campus Mall (and the current park-ing lot), across the Red Gym and to theAlumni Center. Can we start to think ofthe Terrace as being larger than just thespace behind Memorial — that it wouldencompass Lake Street to Park Street —creating a neighborhood of sorts?

What are the top two or three thingsyou hear when you’re out talking topeople about the Union?

The Union is the heart and soul of thecampus. People love the fact that it hassuch a history about it, and that it’salways been here, and it’s this commonthread. Whether you came in 1928 orgraduated in 2002, you have something in common with everyone in between,because you’ve all shared the WisconsinUnion.

The other thing that I hear is that weneed to take care of the Union. And thatwe can’t allow it to deteriorate. I proba-bly hear that more from people who goaway and come back, because if you’rehere every day it’s kind of like you don’tnotice yourself growing old. But seesomeone you haven’t seen for ten years— they look different to you.

UW alumni love this place andhave fond memories, but they also noticethat we need to take care of it. We wantit to be as everybody remembers it, andfor a lot of those people, it was this shin-ing jewel for the campus. That’s reallywhat this master planning process hasbeen about — to identify ways we cando that, celebrate that, in the years tocome, so students will come in 2028and have the same experience studentshad in 1928.

WINTER 2003 35

With projects such as the renovation of Memorial Union’s historic second-floor lounge, whichreceived a thorough makeover in 2002, the Union envisions a future that still embraces its past.

MIC

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Madison is a great place to live, earn a degree, work, and raise a family — but mostUW grads knew that well before the rest of the country began hearing about it in“best of” lists from Forbes, Child, Ladies’ Home Journal, and other publications. Today,

this well-kept secret is just as difficult to keep under wraps as its resident university, which,for years, has held its own in collecting honors from popular publications, even as adminis-trators caution about how little such rankings really mean.

There are the academic accolades, like being listed for five years in a row above numbernine on U.S. News and World Report’s “America’s Best Public Colleges.” And, of course, theunsubstantiated rumor that’s been circulating for decades about landing a spot on Playboy’sTop Ten Party School list. And the most recent, where UW-Madison earned top billing as Sports Illustrated’s Best College Sports Town, and was listed in Backpacker’s Top Five Outdoor Colleges.

UW-Madison recently added

”Campus Scenes That Rock”

to its repertoire of awards

and recognition from national

publications. So what does

this honor mean for

Madison’s music scene?

UW-Madison recently added

”Campus Scenes That Rock”

to its repertoire of awards

and recognition from national

publications. So what does

this honor mean for

Madison’s music scene?

By Christine Lampe ’92

36 ON WISCONSIN

BO

B R

ASH

ID

But somewhere between Monday’s 8:50 a.m. classes and Saturday’s 1:05p.m. kickoff at Camp Randall is Fridaynight. And UW-Madison has earnedsome recognition there, as well.

In February 2003, Rolling Stoneranked UW-Madison among America’stop “Campus Scenes That Rock.” Basedon criteria that included venue, rising talent, and total party volume, Madtownclinched the number five spot ahead ofsuch music meccas as Eugene, Oregon,and Berkeley, California.

Madison’s immediate reaction wasmixed. While some felt it was fitting thatthe capital city made the list, there werenaysayers, too. Those interviewed in aBadger Herald article called “Local Musi-cians Dispute Rolling Stone Claim”strongly disagreed with Madison earningsuch honors. Subsequent feedback onHerald message boards went so far as toblame UW students “who refuse to traveloff campus or journey into a new scene.”Could America’s premier rock ’n’ rollmagazine be wrong?

Indeed, Madison has become a citywhere increasing restrictions are beingplaced on local club owners in an effortto curb binge drinking. And many students are too busy trying to stay competitive to seek out an evening of liveentertainment. While neither scenarioseems like a formula for success, andwhile it’s important to note that rock ’n’roll is just one genre among many offeredin such a diverse city, many local expertsagree that Madison has earned its newreputation — only in unexpected ways.

Vanishing Venues?Cathy Dethmers ’94 moved to Madisonfrom Milwaukee to go to school, but, shesays, “Part of what drew me here was themusic scene.” Dethmers owned Madi-son’s legendary O’Cayz Corral for sevenyears before it was destroyed on NewYear’s Day 2001 in a fire that ignited inthe adjoining Comic Strip bar. That day,her popular club joined a growing list ofMadison venues that had closed, beenshut down, or burned, including Headlin-ers, the Paramount, and Club de Wash.

Beyond the loss of O’Cayz, Deth-mers has seen many changes in the livemusic landscape, and admits she was surprised to see UW-Madison surface inRolling Stone. She estimates that a mere10 to 20 percent of the crowds at heralternative club were students. “I thinkthat’s part of why Madison is unusual ...[There are] so many young people withthe opportunity to see live music, yet itseems like they don’t really take advan-tage of it.”

Aaron Honore x’04, program man-ager at student radio station WSUM,agrees. “Ten to 20 percent will seek outactivities outside of football Saturdays or other obvious entertainment,” heobserves. “But there’s always somethinggoing on. It’s just a matter of knowingwhere to look and who to talk to.” Hon-ore says a lot of the shows he attends arein people’s basements — the kind ofthing you learn about through those inthe know. He finds others on messageboards such as www.madhc.com. Andsome, he hears right on WSUM.

The station hosts a show on Sundaysthat plays only local bands. WSUM’sgeneral manager, Dave Black MA’03,

points out, “Students don’t need to goout to hear what they want to hear —it’s all over the place. And a lot of thatgood stuff gets on CD and winds upright here. That’s part of our mission.”

Opening the eyes of UW-Madisonstudents to quality music is part of themission for the Wisconsin Union Direc-torate (WUD), as well. This student-runorganization books more than two hun-dred shows a year at the MemorialUnion Terrace and Rathskeller, and atUnion South’s Club 770, and relies onthe knowledge and research of its volun-teers to bring successful new acts tocampus. “There’s constantly new inputfrom UW students, so the Union plays abig part in helping make the scene,” saysStudent Music Director Jenny Ng x’04.

Natasha Kassulke MA’93, WUD’smusic adviser, adds, “We always say youcan see new bands here first. We take alot of pride in our history and the factthat Phish, the Indigo Girls, Jimi Hen-drix ... all played the Union before theybecame huge.”

That legacy of bands on the brinkplaying in small venues is what a lot ofUW grads remember about their years

WINTER 2003 37

Some complain that the lack of venues in Madison is to blame for a vacillating music scene. Butwho could forget about the Terrace, the 2,500-capacity venue that offers free live music everyweek throughout the summer?

JEFF MILLER

here. Ken Adamany of Last Coast Pro-ducing has been booking bands aroundtown since he was a student at the UW.“In the sixties and early seventies, wehad a thriving music scene,” he says,recalling clubs like the Factory andDewey’s on Gilman Street, which heldthe first Wisconsin shows for performerssuch as Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart. “There were a

number of night clubs, and I think a lotof people were more interested in seeinglive music in those days. And then it sortof went away with the disco phase.”

But Adamany says there was a resur-gence in the eighties. “Almost any actthat came through the Midwest thatwanted to play in Madison appeared atHeadliners or The Boardwalk.” Whenasked about today’s atmosphere, he saysit’s surviving. “It seems to be improvingnow, although a slow economy affectsthe number of times people go out in aweek, let alone in a month.”

Kassulke adds that those in search ofgood, live music also have other options.“A lot of people look back on the ‘goodold years’ when we had some of thoseother clubs, but there are efforts underway to replace some of those. Also,

events like Blues Fest and allof the neighborhood festivalshave really stepped up, and I think sometimes we takethem for granted. They maynot be nightclubs, but youcan see free music and a lotof local bands.”

You Have to Start SomewhereThe Rolling Stone article recognized localacts Birth of Tragedy, the German ArtStudents, and Phat Phunktion as bandson the rise in Madison. If nothing else,Birth of Tragedy drummer Ryan Peter-son ’99 and singer/guitarist Cory Divinecredit the magazine with helping to give a name to up-and-coming musicians.

“As a result, we signed a manage-ment deal with a company called AngerManagement,” says Divine. “Throughthat, we’re working on a new demo andhave generated some interest throughoutthe industry.”

But Jason Braatz x’05, bass guitaristfor Phat Phunktion, had a slightly differ-ent reaction to being referenced in the

music mag. “The Rolling Stone thing iscool because we can say we’ve been men-tioned, but as far as opening any doorsthat hadn’t already been open ... it kindof happened at a bad time,” he says. Theband, which has performed with RickJames, The Temptations, and Earth,Wind, and Fire, has slowed its bookingschedule while keyboardist Tim Whalen’01 attends graduate school at the presti-gious Manhattan School of Music. That,in essence, gives Braatz the freedom toexplore a different style of music with hislatest group, Bon Pantalon.

Thankfully — especially for bandswithout as many credentials as Braatz’s— the number of small venues willing tomove pool tables to accommodate livemusic is increasing. Places like MotherFools on Williamson Street, Café Mont-martre, and the Tornado Club on thesquare — and even Atwood Avenue’sGlass Nickel Pizza Company — areoffering alternatives for those willing toseek out nontraditional venues. GlassNickel owner Brian Glassel has hostedTuesday night open jam sessions

38 ON WISCONSIN

Where else but in a university town can you find a band named after the first philosophy book written by Nietzsche?Birth of Tragedy (left), Madison’s catharticsupra-heavy metal duo, was recognized astalent on the rise in Rolling Stone, above.

JOSH

JA

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featuring acts such as The New Recruitsand the Cork ’N Bottle String Band forabout six months. But Glassel admits hisrestaurant will never be a major venue.“We offer our customers live musicbecause we can. But there are no plans inthe works to grow offerings to more thanonce or twice a month,” he says.

Even Luther’s Blues, a major venuethat books five to six national acts everyweek, offers space to local talent onTuesday and Wednesday nights. Theclub’s marketing director, Mike Haight,says, “We do a lot with trying to bringnew bands up. We’ll take a chance on alocal act and let them play and see howthey do. Bands like the Kissers, LoveMonkeys, and Know Boundaries thatstarted out on Tuesday nights now drawto capacity on the weekends.”

Meanwhile, some of Madison’s oldfavorites are expanding their ability tosupport live entertainment, as well. TheUnion’s Open Mic series still takes placeon Thursday nights, but now runs until1:00 a.m. as part of its Fashionably Latecampaign. These extended hours offer analternative to bar-hopping, while givingmore new bands a chance to be heard.

And today, after almost three years ofstruggle with the city and local develop-ers, Dethmers is finalizing plans to openthe long-awaited High Noon Saloon inFebruary on East Washington Avenue.

It will still offer a variety of music withan intimate feel, but at twice the size,Dethmers hopes to draw high-profiletouring bands, filling a niche she feels ismissing in Madison. “The larger nationalbands are recognized and draw morepeople out to see live music than wouldnormally search it out on their own,” shesays. “The more that happens, the morethey get exposed to local bands. It helpsbolster the whole scene in general.”

There’s More to MadisonSo is a Rolling Stone ranking enough to make local residents — especially students — fork over five dollars at thedoor or comb the Isthmus to find goodlive music on a Friday night? Maybe.But there’s even more to Madison musicthan the Rolling Stone story tells.

By virtue of being a university town,there’s a certain transience that breedsvariety and creativity. And that’s not agiven on every campus. In Ann Arbor,Michigan (rated number seven in theRolling Stone article), one student griped,“The venues import decent national acts,but the scene still lacks progression andimagination.”

Not so in Madison. Students meet inUW-Madison residence halls. They pickup drumsticks and guitar picks and reallygive it a go for three or four years before

moving on. Rolling Stone editors favoredcities that pumped out more than thirtynew acts per year, and Madison’s influx of fresh talent no doubt propelled it aheadof those cities where the same ten localbands stick around for years and years.

“I suppose every music scene isdiverse,” says Braatz, “but [in Madison]there are a lot of bands that are great ina lot of different genres. The quality iswhat’s unique about Madison. For theamount of bands, the majority of themare really good.”

Surprisingly, the amount of talent ina town of Madison’s size seems to lead to more camaraderie than competition.Kassulke, who spent ten years coveringlocal music for the Wisconsin State Journalbefore working at the Union, notes thatas a positive change in Madison. Cross-promotion is big among bands, whichoften fill in for one another at the Unionand other venues in a pinch.

Madison’s well-insulated economymay even play a factor. “I think part ofwhy this scene is so good locally is thatthere are the kinds of jobs that musicianscan have to pay their bills and still go out and create music without making alot of money at it,” says WSUM’s Black.“There’s the way the local economy is setup, and then there’s a built-in fan base,so you have all of these things comingtogether in a semi-urban environmentthat really, really works.”

Whether the UW and Madisonshould even be considered one and thesame, and whether either should havemade the list at all (or risen higher thanfive) is of little consequence — it seemsthat the local scene really does work. Andwith any luck, Rolling Stone will join thelist of publications that have exposed yet another one of Madison’s best-keptsecrets, creating new focus on risingstars, new venues, the local economy,and appreciation of the many types ofmusic Madison has to offer. That is, untilthe next top ten list is released.

Christine Lampe ’92 comes from a long line of localmusicians. Her late grandfather Jack (trumpet, Hal MackQuartet), father, Bix (drums, The Relics), and husband,Joe (bass, SuperTuesday), have all played a part inMadison’s music scene.

In her career as a Wisconsin StateJournal reporter and as music adviserfor the Wisconsin Union Directorate,Natasha Kassulke has seen hundredsof live performances in the Madisonarea. But when it comes to her all-time favorite music memories, youmight be surprised to find that her

loyalties lie with one venue.

Read about Kassulke’s favorite music moments — and post your own — onthe Madison music memories message board at uwalumni.com/musicmemo-ries. The best stories will be published in the Summer 2004 issue of InsiderMagazine.

WINTER 2003 39

?What’sFavorite

Memory

Your

Music

uwalumni.com/musicmemories

leave off — it aims to be a permanent,impartial court for crimes against human-ity. It has yet to indict a defendant.

The ICTY is the model for futurewar crimes trials. “It will be the prece-dent for international criminal cases,”says Kostich. “There’s really nothing else for the ICC to draw on.”

So as a precedent, how is the ICTYdoing? Is it pushing the world closer tothat ideal in which all people can find arefuge in justice — even those who areaccused of denying justice to others?

So far, the ICTY has brought in 134indictments. The prosecutor’s office hassecured nineteen convictions to fiveacquittals, with fifty-one defendants currently detained at The Hague. It’snow in the middle of what will likely beits biggest case, the trial of SlobodanMilosevic. “He’s the big fish,” says Kostich. “The tribunal has to convict him of genocide. One way or another, he was involved in everything that happened in the former Yugoslavia.”

Although the ICTY is still handingdown indictments — the most recentwere announced in May — its workmay be winding down. The UnitedStates, with its powerful military andfar-flung interests, holds considerablesway over issues of international crimi-nal justice. And Kostich feels that “this country has done a 180 as far asinternational courts are concerned,”referring to the U.S. turnabout andwithdrawal from the InternationalCriminal Court in 2002.

“The ICTY does create a precedent,”says Kostich, and it’s a precedent thatmany powerful governments wouldn’tlike. “If you can have a tribunal forYugoslavia, why couldn’t you have onewith jurisdiction over, say, the U.S.? Or over Russia for what’s going on inChechnya? That ain’t gonna happen.”

For Kuzmanovic, too, the ICTYpresents an ideal of justice that neither itnor the world is ready to live up to. Hesuspects that nations will resort to forceas the ultimate determiner of justice.“You can imagine what would happen in

the highly unlikely event that a memberof our administration would ever have toface a tribunal of this kind,” he says. “Ithink the vast majority of people wouldfeel offended that our own criminal jus-tice system couldn’t take care of the situ-ation and would be actively working tofind a way to send in the special forces,as the president has threatened to do, toextricate someone if they’re arrested.”

In the meantime, Kostich narrowshis focus to keeping the ICTY honest.“You can judge a society — how pro-gressive and civilized it is — by lookingat its criminal justice system,” he says.“The way it treats the indigent and theaccused will tell you how that societytreats the elderly, the poor, and so on.And the same is true for the interna-tional community. At the end of all this,as a practitioner, I want to be proud. I want to be able to come back to theU.S. and say that we’re doing a hell of a good job

John Allen is the associate editor of On Wisconsin.

64 ON WISCONSIN

Law and MonstersContinued from page 43

40 ON WISCONSIN

&LAW MONSTERS

During the last decade, politicians and diplomats haveexperimented with war crimes tribunals as a means ofbringing peace and justice. But is anyone looking out for the rights of war criminals? Why should anyone want to?

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BY JOHN ALLEN

Auschwitz, Nanking, Verdun, My Lai:all war is a crime against someone. That’sits nature. War is the breakdown of civilsociety into organized violence. Willfulkilling, robbery, dislocation, rape: they’reall part of the process.

Of course, some warriors are nastierthan others. Some (Cromwell, Stalin, PolPot) get away with it, leaving the questionof criminality to the hung jury of history.Others (Eichmann, Tojo, Pinochet) facejudgment from a more temporal court.

Add the name Stevan Todorovic to the latter list. He’s one of the 134 leaders,followers, soldiers, and politicians formallyaccused of committing crimes againsthumanity during Yugoslavia’s wars of dissolution in the 1990s. Each of thesemen and women has been indicted beforea court — the International Criminal Tri-bunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)— which was convened by the U.N. andsits in The Hague in the Netherlands,attempting to mete out justice for some of the worst crimes in recent history.

Todorovic was the chief of police inthe Bosnian town of Bosanski Samacfrom April 1992 to December 1993,while Serbian forces controlled the area.During his time in power, non-Serbswere persecuted and displaced, andmany were beaten while in his prisons.At least one of them was beaten to death.Most spectacularly, Todorovic, known tohis inmates as the Monster, was reputedto sexually torture male prisoners for hisamusement. In 1995, the ICTY chargedhim with thirty-seven counts of crimesagainst humanity.

But when Todorovic landed at TheHague in 1999, he made a lucky move —he placed himself in the legal care ofNikola Kostich JD’70, one of America’sleading defenders of the rights of accusedwar criminals.

“I don’t care how awful the crime is,”says Kostich, “and some of these guysare accused of dastardly stuff, and I’verepresented them — I don’t care whatthe crime is, the international communityis required to provide a fair and trans-parent criminal justice system so thatthese guys are tried fairly. If they’re

convicted, they should be sentenced. Ifnot, they should be set free.”

Kostich and his colleagues on Todor-ovic’s defense team found irregularities in the Monster’s arrest (he’d essentiallybeen abducted from Yugoslavia by a teamof mercenaries). With this argument asleverage, the defense team convinced the

prosecutors to accept a plea bargain —Todorovic pleaded guilty to one count (persecution) in exchange for a pass onthe others. He’s now serving a ten-yearsentence in Spain and may be paroled,Kostich estimates, as early as 2005.

“Todorovic was a very bad dude,”says Tomislav Kuzmanovic ’85, JD’88,another ICTY defense attorney, “but hegot a very good deal.”

It may seem that defending accusedwar criminals is just that: an attempt towin good deals for bad dudes. But provid-ing the likes of the Monster with the bestpossible defense may be the only way toensure that international criminal justice isactually just.

“It’s a gray world for me,” says Kos-tich, “but one thing remains black andwhite, and that’s the issue of the rights ofthe accused. Every defendant deserves afull and fair trial.”

Genocide, extermination,torture, sexual assault: the charges are alaundry list of horrors. It isn’t necessaryto defend such criminals. For that matter,it isn’t necessary to try them — a countrycould, when it lays hands on someone itbelieves is a war criminal, simply lockhim up and throw away the key. Inrecent months, the United States hasflirted with this idea, both with suspected

Al-Qaeda operatives captured inAfghanistan and with various membersof Saddam Hussein’s regime. Neitherlabeled prisoners of war, which wouldprotect them from prosecution, nor for-mally charged with any crime, they sim-ply wait in jail until their fate is decided.

Such treatment may seem like poeticjustice, offering criminals no more rightsthan they gave to others. But HeinzKlug, a UW Law School professor,warns that it lacks true legitimacy. “Ifyou want to legitimately declare someonea war criminal,” he says “you’ve got toprove it by a decent process.”

And so, to ICTY defense attorneys,representing their clients is an essentialpart of moving the world from depend-ence on raw power to trust in justice.After all, there’s a reason why justice issymbolized by a balance. Unless defen-dants have full opportunity to answer orrefute the charges against them, there’sno point in having a trial. Fighting toothand nail for defendants’ acquittal — or at least for leniency — is as essential as is their prosecution and punishment.

“If you want a serious conviction,”says Klug, “you’ve got to have a seriousdefense. You want to show that you can win that conviction under any circumstances.”

Kuzmanovic and Kostich are bothfilling that role, keeping up a seriousdefense and making sure the tribunal’swork is legitimate. They’re members of a relatively small clique — there are just102 defense attorneys currently workingat ICTY, and only twenty of them areAmericans.

But Kostich is special — he’s worked with a dozen defendants andwitnesses at The Hague, most Serbs or Bosnian Serbs. He was the firstAmerican defense counsel at the ICTY,the lead attorney for the first sentencing,and he negotiated the first plea bargain“ever,” he says, “in the history of international jurisprudence.

“It’s pretty heady stuff,” he adds.“Me, a little country lawyer, tanglingwith these big cases.”

Outside The Hague, the cases maynot seem so big at the moment. The wars

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“If you want a serious conviction, you’ve got

to have a seriousdefense. You want to

show that you can winthat conviction underany circumstances.”

in Yugoslavia sputtered out in 1995, andafter their sequel, the 1999 NATO inter-vention in Kosovo, they disappearedfrom the front pages of U.S. newspapers.Other wars and other crimes quicklytook their place. Though occasionally the antics of former Yugoslav presidentSlobodan Milosevic, defending himselfbefore the ICTY, bring the tribunal intothe news, the actual operation of thecourt goes almost unnoticed.

Nevertheless, the ICTY represents arevolutionary concept in internationalrelations. The tribunal is an attempt tomake real the often professed but seldomcredible notion that law is superior topower, that right trumps might.

The ICTY isn’t the first internationalwar crimes tribunal. Its most famouspredecessors were the Nuremberg andTokyo courts that held German andJapanese officials responsible for thedepredations of World War II. But thereare important differences. The tribunalsthat followed the Second World Warwere created and presided over by thevictorious Allies; the defendants all camefrom the defeated nations. Althoughbringing Axis Power criminals to justicewas certainly the main aim of the tri-bunals, it cannot have escaped thejudges’ attention that guilty verdictswould also justify the Allies’ war effort.

In 1993, when the Yugoslav warswere at their peak and Stevan Todorovicwas running his police department, theU.N. Security Council made a breakwith history. It determined that theBalkan situation warranted judicial inter-vention, even though no member of theSecurity Council was involved in theconflict. The crimes there, they declared,“constitute[d] a threat to internationalpeace and security.” These crimes neededto be stopped, not to gain geopoliticaladvantage, but because they were wrong.

In the resolution that created theICTY — or, to give the tribunal its fullname, the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsiblefor Serious Violations of InternationalHumanitarian Law in the Territories ofthe Former Yugoslavia — the SecurityCouncil set out four goals: “to bring

justice to persons allegedly responsiblefor violations of international humanitar-ian law, to render justice to the victims,to deter further crimes, and to contributeto the restoration of peace by promotingreconciliation in the former Yugoslavia.”Instead of judging the warring factions,the tribunal was to have jurisdiction

“only over natural persons and not overorganizations, political parties, adminis-trative entities, or other legal subjects.”

“For years, I’ve felt it would be niceto have an international criminal court,”says Kostich. “There should be a place to try the great criminals — the Pol Potsand the Augusto Pinochets of the world.”

But there was a problem in theICTY’s fourth founding objective: tobring about peace and reconciliation.

“Those are political goals, not goals of justice,” says Kuzmanovic. Concern for how ethnic groups get along compro-mises the court’s objectivity with respectto particular defendants, he argues. IfSerbia bears the most guilt for the crimescommitted during the wars, does recon-ciliation demand that every Serb whocomes before the court be convicted, irrespective of individual responsibility?

“What the ICTY should be about is see-ing if certain individuals are guilty ofcommitting certain crimes, not aboutbringing peace,” says Kuzmanovic.“Those aren’t mutually compatible goals.”

How the tribunal’s political intent has affected its judicial function is opento interpretation — and both Kuz-manovic and Kostich interpret freely.Kuzmanovic, who’s of Croatian descent,believes the tribunal has tried too hard to be politically correct, in some casesapportioning guilt simply to show that itisn’t out to blame any particular national-ity but is willing to hold all nations atleast partially responsible.

To Kostich, the court has focused itsattention too closely on Serbs. “I had afeeling, from the first time that I heard of the ICTY, that the Clinton administra-tion had a bias against the Serbs.”

But Kostich’s concern for ICTYdefendants isn’t solely idealism. “Every-body in this has biases,” he says.

Some of Kostich’s bias grows out ofhis connection to Serbian politics. He was born to Serbian parents outside ofSarajevo, now the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. His grandfather, an Ortho-dox priest also named Nikola Kostich,was the first president of the SerbianNational Congress after the creation ofYugoslavia. His father, Mladen, was anofficer in the royal Yugoslav army andfought as a guerrilla when the countrywas occupied by the Nazis. After the war,Mladen escaped the incoming Commu-nist government, which had placed himunder a death sentence. Kostich spentyears under a regime that was trying toeradicate all loyalty to race, religion, androyalism. He was a teenager by the timethat he and his mother were able to emigrate and join Mladen in Milwaukee.

“That kind of experience puts astamp on you,” says Kostich. “It mademe a better lawyer, because I learned tothink on my feet, but it also made mequietly pro-American. I appreciate thefreedoms I’ve found here.”

After law school at the UW, Kostichspent a year at The Hague, then returnedto Milwaukee to practice criminal law,first as a prosecutor, then as a defender.

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Kostich: “The professors and activists forgetabout the rights of the accused.”

“There should be a place to try the great

criminals of the world.”

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When the ICTY set up shop in1993, Kostich felt his profession and hisgenealogy coming together. He set offfor the Balkans to educate Serbs on thetribunal’s existence. He met with someof the most controversial Bosnian Serbleaders of the time: President RadovanKaradzic and General Ratko Mladic,whom former U.S. AmbassadorRichard Holbrooke calls “the Osamaand Saddam of Bosnia.” Two years after Kostich met with them, the ICTYcharged both with genocide. They’restill on the run.

While in the Balkans, Kostich alsocame into contact with the legal team rep-resenting Dusko Tadic, the ICTY’s firstdefendant. Kostich became increasinglyinterested in Tadic’s defense until, in 1996,he began arguing before the tribunal.

“All the hard work I’d done before, allthe toil, all the homicides I’d prosecuted,all the drug cases I’d defended — theICTY comes as a culmination of all that,”says Kostich. “Also, as a Serb defendingfellow Serbs, I can walk in their shoes. Ican explore what really happened in theBalkans. That’s a huge burden, if you’vedeclared yourself a Serb who wants tohelp the country and the culture.”

What he found at The Hague was alsodisappointing. “The people who are mostinterested in international law tend to beprofessors and academics and some peoplewho work for non-governmental organiza-tions in the human rights area,” he says.“And the professors and activists — theyhave blinders on. They’re focused on giv-ing justice to victims, but they forget aboutthe rights of the accused. There was noreal equality of arms” between prosecutorsand defendants, “and nobody seemed concerned about this.”

The question of equality of resourcesmay seem too mundane to list amongrights. After all, why should a court cre-ated for the prosecution of accused criminalsconcern itself with funding their defense?But evidence, transportation of witnesses,documents — they’re all essential parts ofa case, and they all cost money.

The trouble with the procedures atthe tribunal — and thus, potentially,

with future international criminal courts— is that, essentially, those who createdthe court seem to have neglected thenature of war crimes defendants. Tocommit crimes of great magnitude, peo-ple generally have to hold considerablepower (and often considerable wealth).They don’t seem like the sort of peoplewho would need a public defender. Butby the time potential war criminals areindicted and arrested, they’ve beendriven from power, used up their con-nections, and spent their fortunes tryingto escape their accusers. Most of theICTY’s defendants have declared them-selves indigent.

And the law that their attorneys mustface is far more complex than domesticlaws. When the U.N. Security Councilbegan setting up its plan for the tribunal,it had precious little in the way of prece-dent to draw on. Nuremberg and Tokyowere heavily weighted in favor of theprosecution, and international statutestend to be open to interpretation. TheGeneva Conventions, for instance, limitlegal attacks to only those that offer “a definite military advantage” in the “circumstances ruling at the time.”

The “circumstances ruling at the time”invite different readings, and a generalmay easily see “definite military advan-tage” where civilians (and their lawyers)do not.

Hashing out such questions, as wellas sifting evidence, takes time and oftenthe effort of many people — and thatcosts money that defendants usuallydon’t have. Thus the one issue that hasgrown to be a recurring difficulty forICTY defense attorneys is budget, orrather, the fraction of the tribunal’sbudget that may be spent on a defen-dant’s legal expenses. “This is kind of a bugaboo with us,” says Kostich.

In the ten years since the tribunal was created, the ICTY budget has grownfrom $276,000 to more than $223 million,which may sound like a lot. But considerthis: the Bush administration, in its $87 billion request for the administrationof Iraq, requested $100 million just for theinvestigation of crimes against humanityunder Saddam — five hundred investiga-tors at $200,000 apiece. And currently,there’s no court to try any criminals thoseinvestigators turn up.

At the ICTY, nearly half the budget isearmarked for the office of the prosecutor.The rest must be split among the defense,judges, guards, translators, and many others. Defense attorneys have not onlytheir own expenses and pay to consider,but salaries for aides, investigators, andexpert witnesses.

“I’m not complaining about the factthat I’m paid by the U.N. or about howmuch they pay me,” says Kostich, “but I’mhaving trouble getting support staff.” Sucha staff is vital when the prosecution mayhave spent several years preparing for acase, piling up boxes of documents, andinterviewing hundreds of witnesses beforeeven bringing an indictment. “I simply runout of time to do everything,” he says.“That’s an overlooked part of the rights of the accused, and that’s disturbing.”

Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, East Timor: the ICTY has spawned aseries of offspring. Perhaps the mostambitious is the International CriminalCourt (ICC), created by the Treaty ofRome in 1998 and, since 2002, operatingnear the ICTY at The Hague. The ICChopes to pick up where ad hoc tribunals

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Continued on page 64

Kuzmanovic: Peace and reconciliation “aren’tmutually compatible” with individual justice.

leave off — it aims to be a permanent,impartial court for crimes against human-ity. It has yet to indict a defendant.

The ICTY is the model for futurewar crimes trials. “It will be the prece-dent for international criminal cases,”says Kostich. “There’s really nothing else for the ICC to draw on.”

So as a precedent, how is the ICTYdoing? Is it pushing the world closer tothat ideal in which all people can find arefuge in justice — even those who areaccused of denying justice to others?

So far, the ICTY has brought in 134indictments. The prosecutor’s office hassecured nineteen convictions to fiveacquittals, with fifty-one defendants currently detained at The Hague. It’snow in the middle of what will likely beits biggest case, the trial of SlobodanMilosevic. “He’s the big fish,” says Kostich. “The tribunal has to convict him of genocide. One way or another, he was involved in everything that happened in the former Yugoslavia.”

Although the ICTY is still handingdown indictments — the most recentwere announced in May — its workmay be winding down. The UnitedStates, with its powerful military andfar-flung interests, holds considerablesway over issues of international crimi-nal justice. And Kostich feels that “this country has done a 180 as far asinternational courts are concerned,”referring to the U.S. turnabout andwithdrawal from the InternationalCriminal Court in 2002.

“The ICTY does create a precedent,”says Kostich, and it’s a precedent thatmany powerful governments wouldn’tlike. “If you can have a tribunal forYugoslavia, why couldn’t you have onewith jurisdiction over, say, the U.S.? Or over Russia for what’s going on inChechnya? That ain’t gonna happen.”

For Kuzmanovic, too, the ICTYpresents an ideal of justice that neither itnor the world is ready to live up to. Hesuspects that nations will resort to forceas the ultimate determiner of justice.“You can imagine what would happen in

the highly unlikely event that a memberof our administration would ever have toface a tribunal of this kind,” he says. “Ithink the vast majority of people wouldfeel offended that our own criminal jus-tice system couldn’t take care of the situ-ation and would be actively working tofind a way to send in the special forces,as the president has threatened to do, toextricate someone if they’re arrested.”

In the meantime, Kostich narrowshis focus to keeping the ICTY honest.“You can judge a society — how pro-gressive and civilized it is — by lookingat its criminal justice system,” he says.“The way it treats the indigent and theaccused will tell you how that societytreats the elderly, the poor, and so on.And the same is true for the interna-tional community. At the end of all this,as a practitioner, I want to be proud. I want to be able to come back to theU.S. and say that we’re doing a hell of a good job

John Allen is the associate editor of On Wisconsin.

64 ON WISCONSIN

Law and MonstersContinued from page 43