Another big university has joined the ranks of those conducting criminal background checks on new faculty and staff hires. The University of Wisconsin System’s Board of Regents voted on Friday to require the checks, according to today’s Badger Herald, a student newspaper on the Madison campus. Only one regent opposed the plan, saying it would cost too much and citing criticism from faculty senates on two campuses. But the rest of the board supported the plan, perhaps in part because of the bad publicity the university suffered over its failure to swiftly fire three tenured faculty members at Madison who had been convicted of felonies, two of them sex-related, but whose due-process rights under university policy enabled them to remain on the payroll. The system joins at least five other major public universities in requiring the background checks.