A relatively new center-right student publication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is triggering some students and staff, as stacks of the magazine have been repeatedly and maliciously thrown away since last fall.

This week, stacks of The Madison Federalist were tossed in campus trash bins, just the latest incident in a string of dumpings, said student Ben Rothove, editor-in-chief.

“We have had suspected tossings since the first print edition of The Madison Federalist in February 2025,” Rothove told The College Fix in an email Thursday.

“However, our first confirmed tossing happened in October,” he said. “A university employee saw me refilling a stack that had been tossed. The employee then pulled me aside and told me that another staff member had tossed the stack. According to this employee, a small group of university staff members looked through the edition and mocked its contents.”

Rothove said the incident prompted the student journalists to begin to track the incidents, and provided The Fix with pictures of several acts of vandalism to the magazine.

“While we have had around a dozen suspected dumpings since then, we are only able to verify the ones where multiple editions were found in a trash or recycling bin,” Rothove said, adding that a typical stack has 10 to 20 copies.

Trashings have taken place in Memorial Library, Student Activity Center, and the Mosse Humanities Building, the latter of which “is the same building where the graphic sticker depicting an ICE agent getting shot was found in November,” Rothove said.

“As conservative, libertarian, or simply non-progressive journalists on UW-Madison’s campus, we are used to challenging the campus orthodoxy and facing backlash for doing so,” he said. “Incidents like this reinforce that The Madison Federalist was a necessary addition to our student media ecosystem.”

He said he believes it is primarily students throwing the issues away, and that administrators are aware the vandalism has occurred.

“In reality, there is little that can be done to prevent students from throwing newspapers away,” he said.

Editor’s note: Ben Rothove also writes for The College Fix.

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