Lady Liberty on the lake

Lady Liberty

On a February morning in 1979, UW–Madison students awoke in amazement to the sight of the Statue of Liberty peeking out of the ice on Lake Mendota. The replica (no: it was not the original Statue of Liberty, which sources report still stands in New York Harbor) was the work of the Pail and Shovel Party, the satirical political group that then dominated UW–Madison’s student government. They made their statue out of chicken wire, plywood, and papier-mâchét at a cost of $4,500. Vandals burned the first Lady Liberty in March 1979, but the P&S gang made a new one out of Styrofoam the next year. After 1981, it was put in storage for more than a decade, but the Union’s Hoofers have returned her to the Mendota ice irregularly since 1996.

The art for the Badger Pride Wall was created for WAA by Madison illustrator Nate Koehler.