mcndcy, cctcbcr 23, 1970
c!y r r
UNL -parking gsrogo oonocessoiy I -; -
leicers
Nebraska Union Director AI Dennett's ur
tion at last week's Council on Student Life (CSL)
meeting that UNL needs a hli-ricc pcikin;; enr
age has not yet bcoms a fcTrml proposal. If end
when it does, it should be received with a hcclihy
dose of skepticism by students end the rest of the
UNL community.
Bennett chimed the 2rr2 would provide cn
ecnonucslly sound future" for the Nebraska
Union. It seems Dennett is having trouble attract
ing Iincohutes outdde the campus community
to union events anil he is blaming the lack of
parking space.
Hih rise prees within a few blocks of the
union provide hundreds of parkkg spaces. Unless
we want a parking &jz& built in the center of
campus, UNL's garage would be at least as far
away as the nearest downtown parking building.
There is evidence also, that when someone or
something is important enough, the community
does hot let parking stand in its way.
Even if a parking zpizcz would substantiaUy
increase union use, it wouldn't be vcrth it.
Dennett's prediction of the cost of a 650
car tizz" seems about rcht. Last spring, in
another discussion of parking csragss, Kay
Coffey, UNL's assistant business and finance
manager, estimated the cost of such a building
at about $3,000 per vehicle space. This cost
would be absorbed by the students. Unless
hvildisz financing policies have changed, the fact
that the uawn could be built from bond surplus
would net eliminate student costs, as Dennett
told CSL.
The Nebraska East Union is being paid for
with bond surplus. Student fees wi3 be $5 higher
beginning next fa3 to pay back the money.
A parking garage is not essential to the union's
financial future. The students have paid for the
union since it was buEt in 1 933 and we will
continue to do so as long as the union is respon
sive to the day to day needs of the UNL com
munity and students.
on on
w
P '
shows media's unconscious bias
By Nicholas Von Hoffman
By our standards putting Chiang Ching, Mao Tse
tung's old lady, in the slammer would be Eke locking up
Martha Washington.
If you speak Chinese and live in a commune, what's
happening there probably makes perfectly good sense, It
makes none to occidentals of the American stripe, but
while the reporting on the affair sheds no intelligible light
on what is transpiring in Peking it reveals the unconscious
biases of our mass media.
There can be no other way to explain the description
of Chiang Ching and her crowd as leftist leaders." What
is a leftist leader in a nation where everything down to the
last safety pin is nationalized and the property of the
state?
You can also hear Chiang Ching's people called
Ideologically motivated" and "radicals" on the radio and
television cere.
The New York Times does make an effort at defining
some of this nomenclature. Thus Fox Butterfield writing
from Hong Kong tells us that: The radicals, a generally
sidewise
young group, came to power ia the Cultural Revohitbn
because of their backing for Mao's attacks on entrenched
power-holders in the party and their support for reforms
in education, the economy and the party. Among other
things, the reforms barred bonuses and wags raises for
workers, required party officials to spend more time at
manual labor and made millions of city youth resettle in
the countryside after finishing schooL" .
At the same time, many other news dispatches refer to
the government or the people that Chiang Ching is
apparently fighting as 'soderates,'' "middle of the
readers," or "pragaatists. Undoubtedly, the American
news writers using these terms think cf them as
descriptive, and they are descriptive; they describe the
unconscious political maps inside cf cur journalists kesds.
The people writing these dispatches aren't ia Chst;
they know so little about the country they ccnlda't even
hxsapackedttQafewvedatsQi - .
7rtfcre the afjsctrves they use ia essenh:
political factions axe tut a prelection cf their
view of our own desttsxis pcdltscs.
Thus the moderates are the ones who cccrpy cOMal
rticns-crcdentialed persons, persons hece cpiininns
are sanctioned by prtstics people and institiiticnx
Moderates, ycuH notice, also carries the susstlsa cf
pecple who are ncswlyttamJc, who are cpiet, stationary
er.d net given to chsrs.
People ia the Tsntcs' dispatch who are labeled reds!s
are those who favor "reforms in education, the
economy. . ." Radicals originally got their alarming
reputations because they were people who went to the
radix, the root of matters, and therefore advocated
causing upheavals. The word still has that connotation,
but notice how it is applied to persons advocating far
less drastic measures summed up in the word "reform."
In the news columns of -the Times, radicals and reformers
are the same people.
This kind of thing isn't deliberate. It probably passes
through- the hands of the editors and the copy readers
unremarked on because that's how they think; that's their
mind-set. WMe they're too sophisticated to agree that all
reformers are radicals, they'll print that very assertion if
the words radical and reformer are separated by a clause
or two.
Along the same lines the people who oppose doing
such things as making "party officials. . . spend more rime
at manual labor" are regarded as pragmatists.
Even if this totally communist, coHectivist society is
one which nobody on the staff on any Americaa news
gathering agency could stand living in, the Chmese.whom
the journalists conceive of as defending a hierarchies!
social structure are the ones on whom the favorable word
"prpssatist" is used. They are the ones who, ia the
language of the Times, "put economic growth and orderly
sdminstratioa .; above ideclcgscd campaigns j-d
revolutionary purity."
The practical, moderate and hard-headed folks who get
results against the wild, irmrse&a!, fanatics who would
rather spout dreams than grow bread. Whether or sot such
divisions exist in China they are a perfect paradigm cf
how our own politics is described to us by our news
people. .
As a consequence, a premium is given to the pclitidaa
most able to extrude an unbroken paste cf insipid
sincerity. The stance for winning the behest approval is
immobile,, quiet and cotton casdy-fcenfa. The other
cloud-wrapped Eric (the Wise) Scvareid rebuked
Jsainy Peanut for revesleg "an instinct for the deliberate
iasult, the loaded phrsse and the bread innuendo." To
conduct a campaa without so much as a losdsd phrase
or an innuendo of broad or narrow dimension is to be a
modem moderate, a middle cf the rosder suitable for the
Columbia Broadcast System, a perfectly ccntrcSed
functicnsiy. From Demosthenes through Pitt and Cuxke
all te wry down to limy Truman, the Issus cf
democratic debate has been' psssknate, insults and
ferpirins. With Sevsreid we must hre a politics vfithcut
"pssslaa, without forensiss, without the prmfVty cf
ezprcssh3 a fzir hope or freshening vision. -
At Ciessmetime&eSeYsific(cq)scf thiswerii
areduIL
SSsnd pat, stsy dear and act prtnstss, and vrhea the
voters form circles and dance ia the dust, calling for issues
Lhs Indisns prying for rain, 1st all fcsdsrs evscuste their
Utiif mil i -iJ m mmm LJM.4wkA W Mjr-mA.f fc lnat
ticro pzfcng not cti-jilzn
The rrcblcm facing the Residence IIs!l Association in
re-ard to parkir fpace is ssn2sr to the trailic Ccm
prchleni facing the people of Lincoln. One asks where dc
we put a3 these cars and the other asks where csa all the
efficiency. The srnHarity lies ia the fact that there axe
cosr and will be ia the future too many can for theexist
fcg available spice. .
Our solution lies ia either cresting new space for can
or somehow reducing the number of cars. The Residence
IIsH Association suggests the creation cf a parking lot
where there now stands a mllo-iniZet field. The city of
Lincoln proposes the construction of a highway through
Wilderness Park. Both involve costly outlays and irrevers
ible, action. I think the simpler and more efficient alterna
tive is a reduction in the number of cars on the campus
and in the city.
The ASUN Senate can seriously study the situation
and come up with acceptable means of reducing the
number of cars on campus. The Lincoln City Council can
do Lkcwise. This alternative needs consfderatioa.
Sincerely,
William Kerrey
Open invftztlon
In response to Randal Jauken's comments in the Oct.
12 DzZy Nebmkan I would like to explain the selection
procedure we go through in bringing speakers to UNL and
consequently spend student fees.
Selection of speakers for the academic year is done
during the spring semester of the year before. This year's
speakers (and the symposium format and topics) were
selected in the spring of 1975. This selection process takes
about one and a half months, and consists of sifting
through the hundreds of available speakers and collecting
as much input as possible from students and faculty
members before finally choosing them.
This is all done in public meetings and as chairman,
-1 have always desired as broad a representation as possible
on the selecting committee. We have never been
approached by any one on behalf of the Young Americans
for Freedom.
Instead of complaining about the selection process and
the final product of the programs which interested and
dedicated students have put together, I invite those
wishing to affect the speakers program to become a part
of the Talks and Topics committee and make inputs at
the time they will do some good during the selection
process instead of after the program has already begun.
I can be reached through the Union Program Office,
Nebraska Union 115. The telephone number is 472
2454. This invitation is for anyone interested in helping
to plan next year's speakers program.
Bruce Whitacrell
Both stores popular, cheep
The "Orion" cartoon strip of Wednesday, Oct. 13
bothers me. Trying to be derogatory, Stewart compares
the new Dirt Cheap Record Store with McDonald's.
But, suprisingly this is not all that incorrect a comparison.
McDonald's is a successful American institution because
they sell a popular product for a reasonable price. The
same goes for Dirt Cheap; and because they have been
successful, they wished to move to a nicer store, a stare
more comfortable to work in. So, even though the new
store is larger, cleaner, and brighter , it still has the same
pepuhr product for a reasonable price.
Sincerely yours.
Bob Robinson
A h:g hzr,d for.
Re the letter in the Oct. 21 DzZy NebxzZzi from the
n&t of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity: No's? that yoa
fine young mew have single-handedly resurrected Home
coming into a position that pleases the alumni, what are
your plans for next year's Goat? A giant hand patting the
beck cf a huge chicken-wire and tissue-paper ATO o?
. Joelludsna:
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