editoriQ
4
Solzhenitsyn
About a week ago, one observer of the
Soviet scene speculated that Russian novelist"
Alexander , Solzhenitsyn soon might be
stripped of his nationality and banished to the
West as a stateless person.
"If this should happen," the source wrote,
"Solzhenitsyn will not become a man without
a country; Russia will be a country without a
man."
The speculation has become fact News
reports Wednesday said the 1970 Nobel Prize
winner had been deported to Bonn, West
Germany.
Solzhenitsyn, 55, had refused to leave
Russia voluntarily. In the past, hundreds of
Soviets supported the beleaguered writer,
under attack from government officials for
publishing what he calls "the truth about
Russian history."
The latest official fusillade concerned
publication of a book that documented Soviet
terrorist practices from 1918 to 1956, under
the tenure of Lenin and Stalin.
In recent months, Solzhenitsvn's support
has dwindled to almost nothing, except for a
group of about a dozen Soviet intellectuals.
The Soviet Union's treatment of
Solzhenitsyn is deplorable, and its decision to
deport the author is hard to understand. In an
era of improved diplomatic relations with the
West, it would seem that the Kremlin would
want to avoid massive worldwide protest,
which easily could ruin detente but is almost
sure to occur.
Part of this protest has been generated by
UNL group, which has drafted a letter to the
Soviet ambassador in Washington. Copies are
in Nebraska Union 115, and students should
sign it.
As the letter says, truth doesn't need
another martyr.
Mary Voboril
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FOLP AROUND A CUP
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editor
Red scare
Dear editor,
Wednesday the news services reported that
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the dissident Russian
author, has been arrested. Plainclothesmen and
uniformed police surrounded his Moscow
apartment building, found newsmen present
and withdrew, only to return several hours later
to make the arrest unobserved. There was no
word about the author's safety.
Nobel Prize-winner Solzhenitsyn is known
for several works, of which the most recent is
Th Gulag Archipelege. Fears that the Soviet
Union would retaliate forcibly because of his
latest writings on the labor camp system now
em confirmed.
As members of a university, we are morally
obligated to take a stand. At stake is a brave
man's life, the principle of free expression
the spirit of detente. Politically motivated
rhetoric Is irrelevant (both sides have been
guilty of suppression of dissidents) what
matters now is a statimwt of concern. If the
vuice are loud enough, r rs will bear. Students
page 4
may sign 3 letter of protest in Nebraska Union
115..
Pat Olson
Consumer protection
Dear editor,
Several bills in the Legislature concern
consumer issues, and we as individual
consumers should understand what these bills
can do for us. One is LB327, the Uniform
Consumers Sales Practices Act.
LB327 prohibits dishonest pyramid sales,
which is a chain distribution approach that
concentrates more on bringing investors into
the operation than on selling the product. It
also prohibits unfair and deceptive trade
practices (such as phony sales, bait and switch
advertising and fake guarantees).
A third prohibition concerns unconsciontble
trade practices, such as contracts in which
buyers waive all their ritfnts or schemes that
take unfair advantage of handicapped or
illiterate buyers. The biil establishes the right to
recourse of private individuals or by the
attorney general for damages.
LB327 has been thoroughly revised and
compronvrcd s, pon for its general file reading.
Act for ycur consumer protection today with a
phone call or letter to your state senator, urging
support of the bill.
Nebraska is one of only six states with no
provision prohibiting deceptive and unfair
practices. It shouldn't be.
Consumer Aid Group
daily nebraskan
Nebraska taxpayers:
students' enemy No.1
This is written on Tuesday, to be published on Thursday. On
Wednesday evening, there will be, or was, a mass student meeting
to discuss visitation and alcohol on campus, among other things.
If past experience is any guide, there are a couple of things which
can safely be predicted about that meeting.
The Nebraska Union Ballroom holds about 800 people. It
won't be full. As meetings go, it will be large, but it will not be a
mob scene.
Many people who attend the meeting in high hopes will be
bewildered, because what resolutions are passed will be largely
ignored by the powers-that-be. The disappointed ones probably
will slink off to sulk, muttering something about knowing all
along that it wouldn't work.
mory cannon
CCtflflOft -EGO
The idiot who wrote the letter that was reprinted in this
column a couple of weeks ago will write another collector's item
about the meeting. He will rant about mobs of students whipped
into a drunken frenzy, probably by agitators or agents of the
devil, if he doesn't do it, someone else will.
State Sen. Terry Carpenter will point out that only about 3
of the student body attended the meeting, and ask "Don't the
rest care?"
There is sameness to attempts at student activism that breeds
cynics. Although meetings, petitions to the regents and the like
all have their place, wa fool ourselves if we take them too
seriously.
Students are only a small, disunited minority in Nebraska.
Worse, Nebraskans don't trust them. Blame the Populists if you
like, but Nebraska often has a decidedly anti-academic bias.
Students didn't help matters any when they staged a strike in
1970 against the bombing of Cambodia.
Now the word student conjures up visions of madmen who
reasoned vaguely that if they parked their bodies in the Military
& Naval Science Building, they could force President Nixon to
leave Cambodia alone. Then we begin to talk about mass
violation, student self determination, not to mention liberation,
and the University's perennial requests for more money. Perhaps
it is not so amazing that people treat us like orangutans in cages.
Wa forget that the atmosphere of the University is about as
familiar, as the back cf the moon to many people whose tax
money supports it There are a lot of floofy attitudes about the
University which were formed in a vacuum, simply because
students never took tha trouble to disseminate the truth. That
must change.
We should face the fact that this is a state-supported
University and it answers to the taxpayers. We haven't done that.
Instead, when we want change, we badger the administration, we
badger , the Legislature, we badger the board of Regents-we
bother everyone, in fact, except the people that we need to reach.
The Board of Regents could ignore public opinion, but it
rarely does. We need to change the attitude of the people in this
state. We cannot do that unless we come out of our cages.
In other words, what we tmd is a public relations campaign. It
needs to be organized by some student group with a targe
constituency, We need state-wide attention, which means not
cily meetings and petitions, but also prats releases and speaking
bureaus aimed at outstate groups. We need to reach a lot of
people.
The University can only benefit from a student campaign to
show that there's more to an education than football practice.
Students can benefit from the public trust it could generate. And
we might even get rid of the open door rule.
thursday, february 14, 1974
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