Wednesday, februcry 9, 1977
4
daily nsbreskan
LGO
ireci ASUN
Apathy is a mask that each of us wears at one
time or another. We can depend on students
being apathetic, with the same accuracy as we can
depend on the weather being cold tomorrow.
However, we cannot hide behind the mask of
others.
"It'is very hard to represent the students if
they don't tell you what they want," says ASUN
President Bill Mueller.
Perhaps this is Mueller's excuse for ASUN's
ineffectiveness, this year. ASUN Senate has had
a hard time getting together this semester, A
quorum is a rarity. Swearing in new senators
seems to be a regular part of the agenda,
ASUN needs leadership. The senators cannot
be inspired by a massive student body that is
reticent to speak.
Whether students are too busy minding their
own business or simply bored with student
government is not an excuse upon which ASUN
should rely.
When we elect a student to be our ASUN pre
" sident and our representative at the NU Board
of Regents meetings, we are electing a leader to
voice the concerns of the student body .
A leader's main job is to inspire his or her
followers. We are not electing a follower or a
person simply to listen to a heartbeat and record
it. ' " ' .
The ASUN president cannot wait for a war to
incite students as it did 10 years ago. The ASUN
president is a student, too, and his or her reac
tions as a student should be in tone with the rest
of the student body.
The president should lead the ASUN Senate.
Senators need inspiration from their leaders to
make them want to attend meetings and take
pride in their elected positions.
ASUN elections will take place next month.
Let's hope we elect a leader.
Vance silently fills Kissinger's shoes
His predecessor always surged in, surrounded by body
guards, like a gangster or a rock star. Cyrus Vance ambled
in alone for his first press conference and was at the
podium, peering over his half-glasses, before anyone
realized he was in the room.
The torch of American foreign policy has passed, from
the most imperial and theatrical secretary of state in
history, whose every whim and quip were chronicled by a
worshipful press corps, to a calm, gray-haired professional,
who apparently expects to be treated like an ordinary
mortal, not a super-celebrity or a $ owreign power.
At the last, Kissinger, in his greed for notice, was
reduced to accepting a uniform from the Harlem Globe-trotters-anything
to delay the dread moment when the
spotlight would be turned off, and the curtain would go
down. Kissinger loved the power, the jets, the limousines,
the adulation. His Secret Service protection is bsing
extended to soften the withdrawal pangs,
.v Kissinger's abiding problem, apart from his ego, was his
distrust of democracy. No one was more nettled by its
inefficiency, its tedium, at home and abroad. He made
Washington winds
friends with dictators, in Vietnam, Chile, China, South
Korea. He made a secret of everything but his resentment
of the Meddling" which is prescribed by the Constitution
in the management of foreign policy.
He felt so strongly about the nee4 for one-man rule
that he prevailed on Gerald Ford in his farewell State of
the Union to include a reproachful passage about "the
regrettable tendency towards congressional intrusion into,
or obstruction of presidential responsibilities" a final
warning against the dangers of democrary .
Vance, by contrast, seems perfectly willing to tolerate
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Customary use of custom confusing
No limits. One of the most misused words, even among
the educated, is parameter. . As defined in Webster s New
World Dictionary, it means "any constant, with variable
values, used as a referent for determining other variables."
Is that all clear? Apparently it isnl to many people. A
great many, misled by the sound of the word, think it
means perimeter. Example: "However broad the general
education1 of the past might have been in terms of dis
ciplines, it still operated within the parameters of the
hernstein on words
classical Western culture." The word doesnt mean boun
daries, limits or perimeters; it means er . . . urn . . .
yTcnow. Avoid it unless it lies within the perimeter of
your technical education.
A word to the customer. Two letters that arrived al
most simultaneously asked about the word custom as
used in "custom tailoring" and "custom-built home."
One letter, from Marion Maratea of Philadelphia, asked
how it is that we use custom in phrases like "custom
tailoring" when the dictionary defines the word ss mean
ing tradition or habit. Read on in the dictionary and you
will find that the word also means made to one's order
or one's own specifications. That meaning is not at all
far-fetched because underlying the word custom is the
Latin root suus, meaning one a own. That meaning also
is the basis cf the word custom in "custom -built house,"
which re&rs to a house built to the customer's order.
Out in the field. Two classes at a school in Pennsauken,
N.J., heard they were going on a field trip to Philadelphia.
According to Terry Nat ale, a speech pathologist at the
school, one student asked whether field trip meant they
were going out to a field and was told that the phrase
meant a trip outside the classroom to get information
firsthand. That answer was, of course, correct, but Miss
Natale asks how the term came about. The word field
originally meant, and still means, a tract of open land.
But centuries ago it took on a figurative sense of an
area in which practical work is done, an area of practical
activity as distinct from one of academic study. When the
term was first used one knoweth not. -
Tough cases. We now run into some controversies
between Miss Thistlebottom and Mr. Goodwriter. Four
sentences have been sent this way by A. Lascola of
Buffalo, who asks which pronoun to use in each instance
Here are the troublemakers:
1 . That's supposed to be me (I?)
2. It should have been she (her?)
3. It must be me (I?)
4. Everyone would like to go, even us (we?)
Half a century ago teachers would have insisted that all
those pronouns would have to be in the nominative case
therefore: .l2.she3.lA we.
Nowadays most good writers would probably vote this
way: . me2. her or she; 3. me or ; 4. we. The least
controversial item is No. 4, probably because everyone
. senses a kind of ellipsis there: "Everyone would like to o
even we (would like to go) In the other instances much
would depend on how formal and rigid the writing sur
rounding these sentences was and how conservative the
writer was. In any event, times change and so does usae
to a limited decree. .
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congressional intervention. He is, he declared, quite
looking lorwara to u.
That's style, of course. But what of substance? What
will this country's attitude be towards people in other
countries who speak up for freedom? Kissinger regarded
Solzhenitsyn as a nuisance, like the war protesters who so
hampered Kissinger's four-and-one-half-year search for
peace in Vietnam, like the senators who blocked his way
to further adventure in Angola.
The first time out on his vexing and central question of
foreign policy, the Carter administration spoke out
clearly, unequivocally -rand then retreated.
last week, to the satisfaction of those Americans who
think we should stand for human rights, the State rt.
o. the Soviets to lay off Andrei Sakharov, the valiant
Nobel laureate who is facing new and more . sinister
oppression from his government.
Alas, it turned out to be a clerical error. That is, some
underling, admirably hberal-minded, in the European
Affairs Bureau, had seen in the threat to Sakharov a clear
violation, of the Helsinki Accords, and put out the proper
. response.
It may have been bureaucracy's finest hour. But it
caused consternation at the top. Jimmy Carter, on being
advised of a howl from the Soviet ambassador, made a
mealy-mouthed statement which at ctoce said, "I wish I'd
said that" and "I wish it hadn't been said."
Vance wants normalization of our relations with Cuba.
Vietnam and other small countries that Kissinger saw as
intolerably disrespectful to American strength and face.
It is good to have a secretary of state who promises to
act openly and speak on the record, who wont tap his
friends or record his telephone calls. But the most
heartening aspect of the Sakharov episode is the evidence
it offers that in the State Dept.-; at the lower levels any
way, there are people who in spite of the unilateral
Kissinger years, continue to believe that treaties, even the
Helsinki Accords, mean what they say, and that America
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who are in trouble for saying what they believe.
letters
After about two weeks of constant complaining about
Nebraska's basketball team and coaches, I think that it is
about time that someone comes to the rescue. I am an
ex-basketball coach from the early 50s to the late 60s,
1969 to be exact.
I was fortunate to have a basketball system, students,
fans, band, players, as well as assistant coaches that
appreciated what we as a team, school were trying to do.
Unfortunately, I can't say that about the students and
some basketball fans here at the University of Nebraska.
I haven't been in Lincoln for very long, only about six
years, but I feel that the Nebraska coaches (Joe Cipriano,
Moe lb a, Mr. Porter) and the players are getting a bum
deal from the fans at NU.
I do not know Coach. Cipriano personally, but I've
gone to every home game the past six years, and some .
out-of-town games to boot And I feel that he is a very
capable coach, and is doing a fine job.
Having coached in junior college nine years, I know
what it takes to coach and play a game of basketball.
Obviously most of the Nebraska basketball fans donl: if
takes hard work, tremendous effort, and dedication,
which everyone on the Nebraska staff possess.
Personally, I know this letter will not change anyone's
attitude, because your attitudes are too far gone and
ridiculous. I wrote this letter to let you know that there
are some basketball fans in Lincoln and in the state who
think Joe Cipriano is a fine coach, and should be applaud
ed for his efforts.
Last Wednesday I had some of my old assistant coaches
from Des Moines. It was the Kansas game, I was embar
rassed to say the least.
Had I been a recruit, sitting in the stands that night see
ing and hearing my prospective coach and teammates
booed off their own court, I would never come and visit
that school again.
You so-called fans have done more tq hurt Nebraska
basketball then any Coach ever could.
Joe, is a fine coach and deserves more than his share
of respect from his people. But from most people (who
this is directed at) hell never get it. So that is why . . .the
people in the know say Good Job, Joe.
In conclusion, there are many people, who feel this
way, not just a few. Nebraska basketbaU is sound, and is
played this, year the only way it can be and that is pat
ient. That, my friends, takes coaching. Anyone can hand a
ball to a bunch of guys and say-Go to it.
GeseKrv-Isr