DISPLAY ADVERTISINGJillian Grupp

Danielle Hanaford

Max Nonnamaker

Myla Rosenbloom

Alissa Siegenthaler

CLASSIFIED MANAGERRoshni Nedungadi

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISINGAnna Elsmo-Siebert

Matt Preston

ADVERTISING DIRECTORBryant Miller

DISPLAY MANAGERMitch Hawes

EDITORIALCarolyn Briggs

Lin Weeks

Mike Fiametta

PHOTOMegan McCormick

LAYOUT & DESIGNEric Wiegmann

Alex Laedtke

STAFF

SECOND TIME AROUNDThe Badgers take a new mentality to Pasadena

for their second chance at a Rose Bowl win PAGE 14

WHO IS SEGWAY JEREMY RYAN? Getting to know the man on

the Segway — hint: it may prove impossible

PAGE 6

CHECK WWW.BADGERHERALD.COM FOR AN EXTENDED VERSION OF THIS STORY

DIVERSIONSPAGE 4 Maze

PAGE 8, 10, 12 Sudoku

PAGE 13 Dot game

SHOUT OUTS page 11

CONTENTS

THE STUDY GUIDE | 3

CROSSWORD

ACROSS1. Political alliance5. Sad to say9. Admits nothing?14. Computer list15. Trumpet-shaped fl ower16. British Columbia neighbor17. Bawl18. Cry of concurrence19. Eminent20. Start of a quip about parenthood23. It generates a lot of interest26. Work unit27. It might make a ewe turn28. Part two of the quip32. Wind up33. Unexciting34. Derby sounds

38. Rabbit mothers40. Wintry42. Swamp substance43. Use this to join the fl ow46. Field delivery, sometimes49. ___ king50. Part three of the quip53. ‘’Angela’s Ashes’’ sequel56. Sentimental drivel57. March reasons58. End of the quip62. Hymn of praise63. Boat beam64. Craving68. Houyhnhnm’s creator69. Joss, e.g.

70. Good spot for an editor to wind up a fi lm71. Rumormonger

72. Zip73. Actor Montand

DOWN1. Upscale wheels2. Appomattox fi gure3. Something to grow on?4. Valentine adornments5. Future Hall-of-Famer6. Property claim7. Certain singer8. Method9. Maneuver cleverly10. Commotions11. Goat-legged deity12. Fraternity letter13. Sin city?21. In a bind?22. Ms. Brockovich23. Set of beliefs24. Rambled25. Place to get down?29. Where the successful go30. You can count on them!31. Pup’s bark35. First and second, for two36. Berry favored in Hollywood37. Is a good dog, in a way39. Drain41. WWII group44. Purplish45. Grad’s gala47. Ball to laugh at48. Custard dessert51. Earned52. Divination53. A bit crocked54. Reverent55. Pilsener holder59. Sword handle60. Change totally61. One of the six inert gasses65. Jesse Jackson, e.g.66. ‘’Aw’’ follower67. South African golfer

THE STUDY GUIDE | 6

I’m hustling, but I can’t quite catch up to Jeremy Ryan. I’ve arrived early to his sug-gested meeting place before our interview, the fi rst fl oor of Capitol Rotunda, next to the Constitution. But he’s on the move, rolling counterclockwise through the circular halls, away from the agreed place as I approach. He looks intently focused on something just in front of him, but then, that could just be because his mode of transportation moves when he leans forward; Ryan is, as always, on Segway. Like an absurd silent movie, I chase him around the marble corridors. For some-one who’s repeatedly been labeled paranoid, he seems remarkably unconcerned about what’s behind him.

“There’s a group of about 20-30 occupying Bascom to fi ght budget cuts/NBP and supposed accompanying tuition hikes. CORRECTION: 20-30 people and Jeremy Ryan, who I’m pretty sure is half man/half Segway.”

-Me, in consecutive tweets, April 2011

Well, don’t I just feel like an asshole.It’s two days before my interview, and I’ve

dug up a Channel 3000 article from June 2008. Actually, dug up is misleading; it’s the fi rst result when you Google “Jeremy Ryan Segway.” The title of the article is “Anony-mous Donor Gives Man Mobility: Segway Transporter Donated to Disabled Man.”

Fast-forward 48 hours, and Ryan is

explaining the nature of his disability in as much vivid detail as anyone could possibly hope for. As it turns out, that article under-stated the extent of his plight. Ryan tells me he has has Andersen-Tawil Syndrome, an extremely rare form of Long QT that’s associ-ated with arrhythmia, periodic paralysis and physical abnormalities (which Ryan does not display).

“The most cardiac arrests anyone’s ever survived is two. I’ve survived fi ve,” he told me. He went on to explain his unique form of transportation. After the accidents, Ryan said, “I couldn’t do crutches because that’s too much adrenaline. Because with the heart condition, the cardiac arrhythmias are caused by too much adrenaline, so you can’t do. So what are you left with? You’re left with

THE STRANGE BALLAD OF

SEGWAY JEREMYHe should be Madison's most inspirational fi gure. So why is Jeremy Ryan so hard to believe? BY LIN WEEKS

THE STUDY GUIDE | 7

a wheelchair, but if I did a wheelchair, I’d loose this leg as well, just due to atrophy. “

Hence the Segway. At 6-foot-3 and just 23 years old, it’s safe to say that Ryan’s height when standing on his Segway’s platform make him a highly visible fi gure at the State Capitol, even in large crowds. Also contributing to his visibility: his over twenty arrests, the laminated tickets for which he brought with him both times we spoke. Months after tens of thousands of people decided it was fi nally time to spend a weekend at home, to accept Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill as a sad new reality or to at least bide their time until it was time for a recall, Jeremy Ryan continues to fi ght.

“For me, it became about the First Amend-ment when I started realizing what infractions were taking place. And some of these policies are years old. The no fi lming in the galleries [rule] was created because someone got caught napping on their desk,” Ryan said.

Ryan has been arrested dozens of times for actions he categorized as civil disobedi-ence: standing in the Senate Gallery with signs or holding up a camera to fi lm a part of the proceedings considered particularly troubling. Ryan told me he hopes onlookers will be able to separate arrests from actual wrongdoing.

Ryan’s current job is running a political action committee called Defending Wisconsin that’s focused on gaining signatures in the ef-fort to recall Governor Walker. He tells me that he doesn’t draw a salary from this.

It makes for a strange juxtaposition with what I thought I understood about Ryan. The visibility he’s attained on Capitol Square has bred false familiarity, and now, despite his massive online presence, I feel like I’m learning a lot about him. Before we’re done talking, though, he’ll tell me a story involving cellphones, homelessness and The United Arab Emirates, and suddenly I’ll feel like I’ve learned nothing at all.

“My name is Jeremy Ryan and I am a 19 year old from Madison WI. On May 2nd 2007 I was involved in a car crash … A Segway would allow me to have my life back and be mobile again. I have lit-tle money. Due to the bills going delinquent because of the crash my credit was messed up and I get denied for everything. I would be willing to do a rent or lease to own. I can show 3 forms of ID to verify I am not a scammer. I’m just a regular joe looking for help to get my life back.

-Ryan, in a Segwaychat.com forum, December 2007

Let me describe to you two men vying for your respect, your vote and your checkbook. The fi rst is a political reactionary, an attention hound and a perpetual mooch. Witness Ryan’s blog postings on Addicting Info — in his latest, he fi nds an intentional grope by a conservative police offi cer where, via the video he evi-dences, none exists. In other posts, he’s just as infl ammatory, blowing up seemingly innocuous situations in exactly the manner you might expect from a cable news personality or hacky talk show host. For Jeremy Ryan, a delayed school bus becomes evidence that Walker doesn’t care about school children.

The second man is a success story, one who rose from poverty to attain enormous fi nan-cial success, then threw that life away for a cause he believed in. According to Ryan, his childhood was spent in extreme poverty and occasional homelessness. After graduating high school early, he moved to Madison at age 17 but lost his job at the Sitel Call Center. He found himself once again homeless, living in his car in the Woodman’s parking lot. Down to his last $50, he perused eBay and found a lot of used phones.

“I was thinking, well, I don’t know anything about fi xing cellphones, but I’m sure I can fi g-ure it out; I have all the time in the world,” he said. “ And I made $600 off that fi rst $50 lot.”

After several similar shipments, Jeremy told me, he received a call from a wireless provider in the United Arab Emirates who told him they’d been buying up his used fi xed phones just to test his supply. The offered him a con-tract under which he’d buy American phones wholesale then sell them to an importer/exporter for a penny per phone over his cost. But he sold off the company to pursue full-time activism, which landed him on the federal government’s no-fl y list. As a result of acting on what he believes in, his money is trapped; he has no way to access his estimated millions of dollars in overseas accounts.

That’s the story of a man whose cause you might want to get behind. The problem: A story that strange needs independent evidence. And believe me, I asked. Time and time again, the only proof Ryan offered me for his story was his own word or his friends’ words or docu-ments from his own computer. Between that and the grating public and online presence Ryan has cultivated, it’s the second man you’d hope exists, but it’s the fi rst man that you keep seeing.

Not everyone sees him this way. When I speak with Ben Manski, who made a serious independent run at representing Wisconsin’s 77th district in the October 2010 elections, he tells me that he sees no immediate reason to distrust Ryan.

Then again, Ryan is hardly doing himself any favors. He’s proved perfectly willing to tell his story on every available platform, yet each of my requests for independent verifi cation was met with an explanation of secrecy agree-ments and contracts that shouldn’t be broken and fi nally supplemented only with essentially unverifi able documents provided by Ryan that he insisted I not share.

Maybe it’s jealousy: Here’s someone barely older than I am that’s already lived three lifetimes worth of interesting stories, who has overcome more hardship than I will probably ever encounter, and who quite clearly acts on the courage of his convictions in nearly every situation he’s faced with. Maybe my subcon-scious, and the subconscious of anyone doubt-ing Ryan, is silently screaming: “You slacker! That could be you!”

But that doesn’t seem right. Ryan’s story is one I want to believe; it’s one I wish he could verify, and it’s one that’s damn inspirational — movie material, Slumdog Millionaire stuff — if it’s true. But if the whisper of truth is there, it’s hard to hear over the megaphone of self-promotion and exaggeration. So instead of believing, I simply don’t know.

Me: “So those are most of the political questions I had, but I just — Over the past week I’ve been trying to verify some of the stuff. And I think a lot of our views — I’m sympathetic to your story. I’d love to be able to tell it. But I’m worried from a credibil-ity standpoint for the Herald and for myself about outside verifi cation.”

Ryan: “And I’m trying. Most of the people I know are under strict contracts. And that’s the thing with me, also. [Several minutes of discussions about ways he could confi rm the story and reasons that he can’t]. Most people just — Most of the articles out there have said, I’m just telling my story.”

AT SIX FOOT THREE AND JUST

23 YEARS OLD, IT’S SAFE TO

SAY THAT RYAN’S HEIGHT WHEN

STANDING ON HIS SEGWAY’S

PLATFORM MAKE HIM A HIGHLY

VISIBLE FIGURE AT THE STATE

CAPITOL, EVEN IN LARGE

CROWDS. NOW, MONTHS AFTER

THOSE CROWDS HAVE SUBSIDED,

RYAN CONTINUES TO FIGHT.

EXTENDED VERSION AT WWW.BADGERHERALD.COM

THE STUDY GUIDE | 8

SUDOKU

SUDOKU

been sitting on the table for weeks so I decided to open it. NFL XL Detroit Lions sweatshirt. Sorry I’m not sorry for returning it and getting a Packer sweatshirt!

ASO to rejection. SO to drowning my sorrows in bacon.

ASO to the girl at Urban Outfi tters wearing an Or-egon Ducks hat and a Wiscon-sin sweatshirt. Make up your fucking mind before someone beats you up.

SO TO THE GREEN BAY PACKERS - making Wisconsin proud, one game at a time.

SO to my roommates and I spending our Thursday night playing board games, listen-ing to Pat Benatar, and ice skating afterward. DSO to the fact that we are all of the male gender.

SO to the depraved, trou-bled, mildly attractive ec-stasy dealer I’ll probably be sleeping with over winter break. ASO to badger gals for “having too much homework” to spend time with me. The hell is that? I bring you fl owers, cook you dinner, learn your favorite songs on the piano, and you leave me with a loony drug harlot? Come on ladies. All I want is some consist-ency.

SO to the graff iti for keeping me entertained

HSO to smiling. I just like to smiling. Smiling’s my fa-vorite!

ASO to the dude blaring nick-elback through his headphones in the quiet section at col-lege. Your singing along really adds to the picture. We’re not all staring at you because you’re a stud...turn thatshit down.

SO to my boyfriend for pur-chasing rope and handcuff s. Do I like it rough? Yes, sir.

HSO to Frank, Bing, and Dean. I couldn’t get through fi nals without you!!!

SO to homework for giving me a chance to listen to the entire Phish discography. ASO to how much work that means I have been doing lately.

SO to large red-brimmed hats and black boots. DSO to ful-fi lling my childhood dreams and fi nally fi nding Carmen Sandiego. She’s been roaming Park Street this whole time. Who knew...

Informative SO to any fresh-men trying to lure in upper-classmen: Off er to buy them Nachos Plus. It’s really that simple.

SO to whoever left a brown package in the entrance to 333 East Campus Mall. It’s

ASO to that moment when you’re just about to fall asleep and your tv goes into a monthly required test. It’s like an alarm clock but worse and I felt as though god laughed as I was jolted awake for nothing. Screw you cruel world!

HSO to the guy sitting di-agonally in front of me dur-ing our hist 426 lecture on thursday; you were drawing a portrait of our professor....simply hilarious! it appeared like you were paying atten-tion because you would glance up to look at the professor and then go back to drawing. on another note: DSO to pro-fessor shoemaker your con-tinuous stream of jokes and random side comments keep me on my toes during the power lectures.

SO to the graff iti poetry in HCW 2nd fl oor men’s bathroom a few semesters back: “As I sit here and contemplate/shall I shit or masturbate?”

ASO to the glory holes in me-morial. SO to them being too small for any activities.

HSO to the 2 people who pranced across university on friday afternoon. so happy.

SO to the thong on the side-walk in front of the capitol.

ASO to feeling like a fucking animal in this Memorial Union cage as I prepare for fi nals.

THE STUDY GUIDE | 11

SUDOKU

THE STUDY GUIDE | 13

The dot Game

TIME AROUND2

“WE WANT TO GO OUT AND WIN A ROSE BOWL THIS YEAR, AND NOT JUST PLAY IN THE ROSE BOWL.”

ND

T H E S T U D Y G U I D E | 1 4

THE STUDY GUIDE | 15

radie Ewing was the fi rst Wisconsin Badger to emerge from the Lucas Oil Stadium visitors’ locker room just about two weeks ago, more than happy to greet the horde of reporters awaiting

him.Ewing’s Badgers had just avenged one

of the most harrowing moments of their wild season — a crushing last-second loss at Michigan State on Oct. 22 — in the fi rst-ever Big Ten championship game over those very Spartans. The 42-39 victory had it all — the now-standard lightning-quick start by the Badgers, a second-quarter collapse that resulted in a halftime defi cit and a riveting second half that culminated in a stone-cold fourth-quarter gut check.

“It was pretty calm,” Ewing said of Wis-consin’s locker room at halftime, when the Badgers trailed 29-21 despite jumping on the Spartans in the fi rst quarter with a 21-7 lead. “We had been in that position before, and guys weren’t fl ustered. We came out; some different guys said stuff, coach [Bret Bielema] said stuff, some of the captains said some things.”

Ewing, the team’s starting fullback and one of this year’s four senior captains, is one of UW’s best spokesmen. Growing up in Richland Center, just about 90 minutes from Madison, Ewing briefl y fl irted with basketball before walking on to Bielema’s squad. In the four years since, very few people have been more apt to discuss the state of the program.

“It’s just all about taking it one play at a time and just going out there and executing,” Ewing said. “We were prepared [at halftime]; we knew what we had to do.”

Now that Wisconsin is Rose Bowl-bound for the second consecutive year, priorities have shifted. Last year’s magical season had moments like the riveting upset of

then-undefeated, No. 1 Ohio State at Camp Randall Stadium, with a ridiculously tough upset of the Iowa Hawkeyes in Iowa City the next week. Then came the trip to Pasadena, where Wisconsin met the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs, a team that may have been better than anybody ever gave them credit for.

TCU beat Wisconsin 21-19, and Madison was stunned. This was a fan base that had fallen in love with J.J. Watt’s charisma and work ethic, the three-headed monster at

running back with John Clay, Montee Ball and James White and the identity Bielema had forged for the program.

After a season defi ned not by stun-ning victories but by tremendous chal-lenges, the Badgers return to Pasadena Jan. 2 grateful to be back after those two late-October losses that seemed to doom

their season — but make no mistake, their lone goal is winning the game.

“You dream of getting to play in one Rose Bowl, let alone two or potentially more,” offensive lineman Travis Frederick said. “So for us to get a chance to play again — we want to go out and win a Rose Bowl this year, and not just play in the Rose Bowl.”

B

AFTER A SEASON DEFINED NOT

BY STUNNING VICTORIES BUT

BY TREMENDOUS CHALLENGES,

THE BADGERS RETURN TO

PASADENA JAN. 2 GRATEFUL

TO BE BACK AFTER THOSE

TWO LATE-OCTOBER LOSSES

THAT SEEMED TO DOOM THEIR

SEASON — BUT MAKE NO

MISTAKE, THEIR LONE GOAL IS

WINNING THE GAME.

TOPRussell Wilson bites into

his first rose as a Badger

after a 42-39 win over the

Spartans in the Big Ten

Championship game.

BOTTOMMontee Ball takes one

of his 22 carries in last

year’s Rose Bowl against

TCU. Ball rushed for 132

yards and one touchdown

in UW’s first Rose Bowl in

more than 10 years.