page,4
daily nebraskan
friday, October 14, 1977
Ah, dreams.
It's fun to fantasize sometimes. Just sit there
and think about the way things could be. You can
imagine a perfect world.
But fantasies usually do not survive long when
people are wide awake. They fade as the light of
reality shines through the darkness of dreams.
Unfortunately, at least one fantasy continues
to be perpetrated: the prohibition of alcohol on
campus.
In Thursday's Daily Nebraskan, UNL Housing
Director Doug Zatechka compared enforcement
of alcohol rules to enforcement of the 55 mile per
hour speed limit. The regulations have a tendnecy
to limit some drinking, but are being broken
, every day, administrators note.
For years, the entire campus has realized this
except the regulations. In fact, members of the .
NU Board of Regents who oppose alcohol on
campus realize it. But they still vote (or at least
they did in 1 976) to prohibit alcohol.
The question is: if they realize what is going on,
why isn't some action taken?
Those who oppose alcohol on campus probably
want to see the rules enforced. Rules without en
forcement are ridiculous unless there is an ulterior
purpose to the rule.
But we agree with administrators. It is impos
sible to catch and deal with all violators. Now
that the legal age is 19, how can you stop an adult
student from drinking in his own room?
Further, the idea behind the prohibition is out
dated. Some regents still hope to play parents to
22,000 students, Unfortunately, it doesn't work.
Those damn kids are no longer kids, according to
the law.
University administrators favored liberalizing
the policy in 1976. However the regents, except
Omaha Regent Kermit Hansen, voted to maintain
the prohibition.
When questioned, some regents will tell you
they simply represent the views of their con
stituents. They may be right.
Many citizens, for one reason or another, don't
want alcohol on campus. Unfortunately they
don't realize what is going on and they indicate a
lack of respect for students.
The regents, closer to the university than their
constituents, should display their knowledge and
recognize the situation with a vote to allow
alcohol on campus.
The arguments are old, but the issue still pops
up every two years or so.
It's about time for another look at the issue by
the regents. Its afso about time the entire board
recognized the rights of the adults who go to this
university. And it's about time some university
policies left the dream world.
, ii i - """ " l 1 1 "'
Parking meeting
letter
editor
The Parking Advisory Board is meeting Monday at
2:30 p.m. in the (Nebraska) City Union. You may
think the board will be insensitive to faculty, staff,
and students and their parking problems, but as a new
member I think this year's board will be different.
Most importantly, the Parking Advisory Board will
give anyone a chance to speak at the beginning of
each meeting. If you have a complaint or suggestion
on parking at UNL, come voice your opinion.
The board has also asked John Duve (UNL parking
and traffic coordinator) to present at each monthly
board meeting his suggested proposals on lot improve
ments, construction, and classification changes. With
this information, students, faculty and staff will have a
chance to affect parking policies on carnjuis before
they happen.
But to do this we need to speak out and Mon
day at 2:30 is our next chance. We all pay for park
ing, so. let's take the time to influence how our
money's spent.
BillSkoneki
Peril of being politically sexy: Indians face backlash
WASHINGTON-A few seasons back, the American
Indian was politically sexy. All manner of liberals wrung
their hands over the pligh't of Native Americans-their
new, chic label.
Now, however, property-owning whites, including
liberals, are on the warpath against Indians, charging that
they claim too much white-man land and threaten the
stability of the republic.
There is a peril in being politically fashionable. Once
the American Indians got stirred up in the activist '60s,
there were excesses of rhetoric and legal action. Now
there is an angry, organized backlash. Yet, real problems
remain, whether Indians are up or down in the public
estimate.
nick thimrnesch
In the bagful of problems which afflict the overgovern
ed, overregulated American Indian, housing rates are
among the worst. For openers, two-thirds of Indians on
reservations live in houses without running water and half
without indoor toilets,
Indians suffer far more Infant mortality', intestional
disorders, respiratory and middle-ear infections than the
rest of the United States and bad housing is a major factor
in their disease problems.
"We all know about the deteriorated housing and over'
crowding," says Paiute Roland M. Chico, Indian specialist
at the Housing Assistance Council, Inc., a nonprofit cor
poration. "Cut what really kills us is dealing with the
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
It takes 18 months of paper work for an Indian housing
proposal to go through. Republican or Democratic
administrations, they're all the same."
Since 1969, HUD pledged it would build 55,000 homes
for Indians, but only 22,000 were delivered. For all the
romantic attention to Indians, there are only little more
than I million in the United States, (half live on rcserva-
tions), and a five-year program to build even 50,000 units
would improve the situation.
Chico's office and other Indian-interest groups, like the
National Congress of American Indians, have heard count
"less promises from federal agencies and have fought
through mountains of government documents on Indian
housing. Afterwards, they see the same old bad housing.
Small number
"When a big problem concerns only a relatively small
number of people, like American Indians, the bureaucrats
tend to put it aside," Chico says.
An ordinary non-Indian these days has trouble enough
buying or building a house, with all those applications for
loans and permits, title search and closing statements. But
the reservation Indian, supposedly a close-to-the-earth
fellow, becomes victim to a bureaucratic nightmare when
he needs housing.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, HUD, the Army Corps of
Engineers, the National Park Service which makes sure
houses aren't built on archeological specimens, like, may
be, ancient Indian adobes, the Department of Transportation-all
can get in on the act. The chart showing the flow
of decisions looks like a Rube Goldberg cartoon.
Moreover, even after voicing great concerns for Indians,
the government doesn't seem to know how they live.
When tribal councils propose building adobe, sandstone or
log homes, as they have for centuries, HUD. often re
sponds with forbidding stacks of regulations. .
Land has meaning
When Indians ask to live on their own land, since land
has special meaning to them, HUD often talks of the
virtues of "cluster" housing. "AH that spells bureaucrat,"
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laments Chico.
Indian housing costs much more than non-Indian.
Some possible explanations: lending agencies know they
can't foreclose on Indian land; administrative costs some
times equal construction costs; heavy input by lawyers
and consultants.
Even when the housing is built, Indians run into more
government trouble. The impoverished ones often can't
keep up with payments, or HUD stops grants because of
"administrative incapability." Indians complain that HUD
never provided the training "they needed to be housing
administrators.
No decision-makers
Still, HUD has only 65 Indians among its 15,000
employees, and only two are in offices where they can
help make decisions. There isn't a single Indian at the top
of the fat HUD bureaucracy, and the Indians emphatically
have let Secretary Patricia Harris know this.
The Indians are as unhappy with Mrs. Harris as they
were with her predecessors, though she has declared, in
the best bureaucratic federalese, how HUD has a com
mitment to decent, safe, sanitary housing, etc. etc. Indians
still don't believe her.
When an old-style Irish-American would get exasperat
ed (before he moved to the suburbs and acted like a
Presbyterian), he would vent himself by crying, 4Oh,
blame it on Murphy !v
It seems that when Secretary Harris gets exasperated in
public, she often says, in effect, "Blame it on Nixon!"
Honest Indians know that doesn't build houses, adobes
or log cabins for them,
jCopyright 1977, Lot Ange! Tim Syndicate
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