University of Wisconsin, La Crosse
Created | Updated Aug 16, 2005
La Crosse is a city of about 106,000 people located approximately 256.5 kilometers east of Minneapolis, Minnesota and 233 kilometers west of Madison, Wisconsin. It is situated between the Mississippi River and towering bluffs. For more information about the City of La Crosse, visit http://www.lacrossenet.com/answerbook/. There are three major colleges located within La Crosse: Western Wisconsin Technical College, Viterbo University, and the University of Wisconsin.
Do you have an inordinate amount of free time? Do you have a substantial amount of money or access to student loans? Are you able to travel to Wisconsin? If you answered yes to all three of these questions, then you may want to consider enrolling at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse. For all of the official information about enrolling at UW-L written by UW-L, you can visit their website at www.uwlax.edu. The text below includes bits and pieces of information that these websites have either missed or chosen to omit.
Where to Live
Housing is extremely crowded and expensive in La Crosse. If you want to live on campus, then you need to sign up early and pray that you get in. If you have to live off campus, expect to pay high prices for small, run-down, subdivided buildings.
Residence Halls are listed individually on the campus website, but most are four story, ugly brick buildings with basements. Each room is occupied by two, three or four roommates and contains a work desk with a drawer, a bed and mattress, a closet, a dresser, a book shelf and a refrigerator. Each room has a heater, but only a few of the rooms have temperature sensors. This means that if the one room with a temperature sensor keeps their window open during a cool season, they can potentially fry all of the other rooms on their floor. There is no air conditioning in any of the current buildings, so students will have to crack their windows and attempt to create a cross-breeze during the summer.
Each hall has a front desk which sells and cooks pizzas, checks out sports equipment, delivers the mail to students' slots, checks out games and videos, manages the keys to the hall game/workout/kitchen/computer/sauna room and answers any questions students may have. Front desk workers also deal with many drunks and are the ones to search through all of the emergency contact cards when a student gets hauled to the emergency room. The front desk job pays minimum wage, but affords a student the opportunity to earn money for sitting, cooking a few pizzas, playing on the computer and socializing. Desk workers do not have the power to write students up for drinking, but most students don't know this and attempt to sneak by while doing their best not to appear intoxicated.. with hilarious results.
Each hall also has a laundry room and a few vending machines in the basement. Many of the dryers frequently fail to work, so you'll have to keep experimenting until you find one that does the trick. Until then, hanging your clothes up in your room is an effective way of drying them, especially with the aforementioned heating problem.
Classes
All classes on campus are located within five minutes walking distance from one another, so you should never feel particularly rushed to make your next class.
When scheduling classes at UW-L, be sure to look up the professor on www.ratemyprofessors.com, a website containing student written reviews of teachers. It can save you a lot of grief by helping you to avoid the insane or just plain awful professors on campus (there are a few).
If you have some extra time that you need to fill with a one credit course, consider registering for an ESS class. They are mostly pass/fail, only meet briefly once or twice a week, and cover every sort of extracurricular activity, including Scuba Diving and Circus Arts.
Getting Around
Because the campus of La Crosse is so compact, a person in one of the residence halls can easily live without a car or bicycle. For those with bikes, bike racks are plentiful and bike theft (at least on campus) is relatively low. Those wishing to park their cars on campus must purchase a semester permit. Cars without a permit will eventually be towed by protective services. One day passes for visitors are also available. If not parking on campus, expect two to four block walk to class.
This year, UW-L and the Progressives (environmentalist group on campus) released the Green Bike program, which purchased shoddy old bikes, painted them green, and left them out for free student use. Most were wrecked by the end of the first semester, either from poor bicycle quality or vandalism. Second semester has proven to be a repeat of the first One green bike ended up in a tree and two have been fished out the river. It seems unlikely that the Green Bike program will continue for much longer.
La Crosse also has an excellent bus service which students get to ride for free when they show their I.D. Be forewarned that homeless and crazy people do occasionally frequent the bus routes.
Computer Use and Networks
There are computers available for student use located in Murphy Library, Cartwright Center, Wimberley Hall, Cowley Hall and the basements of every Residence Hall. There is also internet access in every dorm room (one Ethernet outlet per resident) and every student receives a free University E-mail Account upon admission.
Are you an online gamer? Don't expect to be able to play them at UW-L. The packet shaper on campus assigns a priority to each of the connections on campus, with the computer labs having the highest and the residence halls having the lowest. This means that the packet shaper will stop packets of information from the dorms while it loads information for the labs, resulting in massive packet loss and latency rates for gamers. The only times online gaming is possible is late at night (when the packet shaper has been turned off) or during the weekends (when very few students are using campus computer labs).
The ITS department on campus is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the network and e-mail. It is a mass of bureaucracy and blurred jurisdiction, so while they will probably eventually get your problems fixed, it will take a while and you will never actually know who is responsible for what.
Activities
Students at UW-L looking to socialize or volunteer should consider joining a student organization. A complete listing of UW-L's student organizations can be found at http://www.uwlax.edu/sac/StuOrgs.
Fraternities at UW-L are (for the most part) fronts for underage drinking and huge parties with occasional charity work to keep their charters. Until 2004 this was largely overlooked by campus police. A large bust of a TKE party in which a great number of underage tickets were issued might indicate a change in this policy. Sororities on campus do not engage in the same activities as the Fraternities or, if they do, at least not on the same grandiose scale.
For those not interested in joining a fraternity, there are always highly visible house parties on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Underage drinkers should beware; the Chancellor's alcohol abuse task force has been working in conjunction with La Crosse police to crack down on underage drinking. Police often attend parties undercover or wait in their squad cars just in front of Residence Halls waiting to grab and administer breathalyzers.
Looking for some exercise? The Eagle Recreation Center is located just across from Whitney and is a great place to work out in the winter months. There are basketball courts, racquetball courts, batting cages, climbing walls, elliptical machines, a circular running track, weight machines, and matted work-out rooms. Various fitness classes are offered year-round, from Yoga and Pilates to Aikido. Mitchell is the other physical recreation building on campus, and offers many of the same services as the Rec., but also has a swimming pool.
Those interested in bowling should check out Pla-Mor and All Star bowling lanes. There used to be a bowling alley/pool table area behind the Cellar in Cartwright Center called Teigen Lanes, but funding for it has been cut. It will most likely be removed within a year or two.
Downtown La Crosse also has a number of shops, including tattoo parlors, hair salons, record shops, book stores, cigar shops, and (of course) multiple bars. One could also hop a bus to the Onalaska mall for shopping, if the selection downtown does not suit your needs or price range.
Landmarks
The most recognizable landmark of UW-L is without question the Hoeschler Clock Tower. During the day the Clock Tower rings every hour with a number of chimes representing the time. The Tower also plays the campus fight song and alma mater randomly during the day. Administrators say the random pattern will be fixed with maintenance, but it seems doubtful. The Tower is a common gathering point for war protestors, Jesus protestors, environmental protestors and unicyclists. The sidewalk around it is almost always covered in chalkings advertising the latest campus events or political candidates for Student Senate elections.
Also easily visible is the smoke stack of the local power station, affectionately nicknamed by students as the "Brick Dick." It stands as the tallest erection on campus.
Visible directly East of campus are the Bluffs, and the most landmarkish of these is known as Granddad's Bluff. It is possible to drive straight to the top of Granddad’s, but some prefer to hike the trails. If you do decide to hike the trails, keep in mind that deer ticks inhabit the grassier areas around La Crosse and be sure to wear long pants.
Places to Eat On-Campus
Whitney Center:
At the center of campus is Whitney Center, which holds within it three places to eat and the campus radio station, which used to play primarily jazz music until it switched formats and now plays primarily news related items.
Whitney Dining Area: The Northern half of Whitney is dedicated to cafeteria style eating. A cafeteria worker in blue shirt and visor stands at the entrance waiting to scan your ID. It costs one meal off of your meal plan to enter. Alternatively, you could use a meal to purchase a "grab-and-go" sack lunch. A grab and go sack lunch contains some kind of sandwich (peanut butter and jelly, turkey and swiss, salami and American, ham and cheddar, or some other odd variant), a chocolate chip dessert bar, a bag of chips, an fruit (orange or apple) and packets of mayonnaise and mustard for the sandwich and a drink.
Once inside the Dining Center, you may help yourself to a tray and utensils and dig in. The salad bar, sandwich line and stir-fry bar are always open. Other items cycle through depending on the day of the week, with pasta bars and taco bars appearing the most common due to their simplicity to make. Note of caution: avoid the pizza burger and taco pizza.
Blimpie's: A sub sandwich station not unlike Quizno's or Subway, Blimpie's is a healthier alternative to the grease riddled food of Char's and the Cellar. One meal off of your meal plan will get you a six inch sandwich with your choice of toppings and a 16 oz soda. There are plenty of other items for ranging from candy to kitchen supplies and VHS tapes, but none of these are covered under your meal plan so you will have to pay for them out of your own pocket.
Char's: A good place on campus to get a fast and greasy burger. For one meal you get a sandwich, a side (fries or baked potato) and a 16 oz drink. The dining area of Char's is sometimes cleared out in the evening for campus activities, like a student organized casino night.
Cartwright Center:
Cartwright has two floors with areas dedicated to dining. The basement has the Cellar right next to the Campus Bookstore while second floor has Trattoria, a variety of non-transfer lunch locations, and a ice cream/smoothy bar.
The Cellar: The cellar is greasy dining, to be sure, but it is also the only place on campus to offer atmosphere dining. Booths are available, music plays over the intercom, and bands or other acts are routinely scheduled to appear by the Campus Activities Board (CAB). Additionally, if there's a sports event on, you can trust it to be playing on the large projection television. One meal plan will get you a 16 oz drink plus a sandwich and fries, a salad, a 12 inch pizza, a calzone and fries, a six inch sub, cheese sticks and soup, a quesadilla, or a wrap. There are many other items on the menu but most, like the cheese curds, are not available for meal transfer.
Long lines are often a problem at the Cellar due restricted transferability hours. Either arrive fifteen minutes before transfers open or an hour or two after. Once you have ordered, take your meal ticket and wait for your number to come up. Depending on the crowd, it may take anywhere from zero to twenty minutes for your order to come up.
Trattoria: Faster than the Cellar but usually crowded as well, Trattoria serves pizza that has been stuck under heat lamps for hours, pasta, bosco cheese sticks and a few salads.
Smoothy Bar: Serves ice cream and smoothies. Also has computer access.
Places to Eat Off-Campus Within Walking Distance
Gracie’s: Greek food (gyros, baklava) in a Greek Atmosphere (Greek music, Greek decorations, Greek owner cursing in Greek at his employees, etc). You can eat a full meal with a drink for around $7.39.
Mennucci’s: Right next to Gracie’s, Mennucci’s offers one topping large pizzas for five dollars and a soft drink for about a dollar on top of that. They also currently have the Simpsons arcade game playing for 25 cents a game. The only downside to Mennucci’s is that they don’t have any music playing in the background, so it can become deathly quiet at times.
Tequila’s: Tex-Mex style family eating establishment on West Avenue across from the Student Health Center. A full meal and drink at Tequila’s will set you back around 15 dollars, but you will get a lot of food for your money.
Mr. D’s: Breakfast and donut shop on the same street as Tequila’s. At the end of the day, Mr. D’s sells all of their unsold donuts for dirt cheap through a walk-up window. They often offer group discount rates for large groups of students or residence halls who call in advance and ask.
Rudy’s: Further West than Tequila’s and a little more off-campus, Rudy’s is an old-fashioned, roller-skate drive-in specializing in burger-faire and chili dogs. The food is very cheap and there are discounts for very young children.
Fayze’s: Located in the Downtown area near the river, Fayze’s is a nice, quiet sit-down restaurant serving steak and sandwiches. Tasty food and reasonable prices, but a little more formal than other places.
Piggy’s: Located on the river, Piggy’s is more expensive and formal than most students on campus will be comfortable with. Still, excellent food and an extensive wine list.
The Pearl: An ice cream shop on Pearl Street with a huge selection and very cheap prices.
