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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 4, 1977)
friday, november4, 1977 page 4 daily nebraskan Jys,J poETQirDDOs mire (seoiteir off tofiootfi) dl n Xi . i J. , Mention student fees these days-and duck. The flak is flying over two main issues: should there be student fees for student organizations and who should allocate those fees. Everyone seems to forget that both of these discussions center on one small portion of fees roughly $6 of the $66.50 we pay each semester. The rest goes to pay for bonds, contractual ob ligations and some administrative expenses. That's no typo. The argument is centered over only about $6-enough to buy three six-packs or an album. Most textbooks cost more. Sunday the ASUN Senate will discuss the allo cation of that pocket money. The Senate agrees with most students that the fees are necessary to provide services on campus. It simply wants con trol of allocations. (A university task force is studying the question of continuing student fees.) We agree with the philosophy behind the move. Elected representatives should hold the purse strings. But we have problems with parts of both proposals ASUN is to consider. The first, suggested by the Senate's budget and fees committee, calls for senators to make up or dominate the committee which judges who gets how much. The committee's suggestion would go to the full Senate for approval. The second proposal, filed by a group of senators led by Bill Skoneki, would establish a 14-member allocations committee. Only three members would be senators. This committee's n - proposals also would be subject to ASUN Senate approval. The second proposal comes closer to being realistic and responsible. But there are still problems with it. Some of the problems are the same for both. Both boards propose having senators sit on the allocating committee. This time-consuming process probably would take away from the senator's other duties as a representative. Also, both boards-at least on the surface are highly subject to the whims of a possibly capricious or incompetent Senate (the second less than the first). A more workable alternative might be to pattern the process on the Legislature's procedure. The Legislature relies heavily-some say too heavily -on their budget analysts. But all appropriations remain subject to the review of elected representatives. Who would comprise this ASUN Senate budget analysts staff? The simplest answer might be the current Fees Allocation Board. In the past, this board has acted responsibly. In many cases, members of the board have worked harder than senators. Sure, there are problems with every proposal. A workable compromise should be sought. More importantly, the problems should be put in perspective. About $150,000 is allocated to student organizations each year, These allocations are the vital lifeblood for most. Still, it gets down to about $6 a semester a student. The NU Board of Regents' desire to eliminate fees for student organizations is misplaced. The regents should be more concerned with holding the line against tuition raises which hurt much more where it counts-in the wallet. lood of America's heritage spills on N.Y. street New York-She tried to wake him up at 5 o'clock that afternoon. When he didn't move, she let him sleep. Enriqueta Zambrano didn't like the job her son had any way: driving a cab from 6 at night until 6 in the morning. A boy throws his life into a fire working ho!-- like that. Besides, her son Eddie had quit school for this job. He was only 22, but he didn't have the energy to attend college and then work at night. His nerves withered his Stamina when he sat in classes. The father was dead and Eddie felt it was his duty as a man to help his mother. Make money, make money, he kept telling himself. But as the mother walked quietly out of the bedroom, she was pleased that she had not been able to wake him for this job she did not like. Eddie overslept because he had stayed up when he had come home early Saturday morning. lie went to watch his youngest brother, Fabian, run in a high school track meet. Fabian finished second, and when Eddie came home it was midafternoon. He said he was fine, that he would wake up with only a couple of hours sleep, but he did not. j i rii r n 15 breslinrVJs ... Pfcttttartk. - jfc&as&aff' - Then at 6:15, the dispatcher from the cab company called the house. The mother, who doesn't speak Eng. lish, gave the phone to her son Abe, who is 18. "You got to get him, we're shorthanded," the dis patcher said. When Abe shook his brother, Eddie Zam brano jumped up. He was upset that they had let him sleep. His mother called in from the kitchen that she had his dinner ready, Zambrano, drying his face, rushing to the door, said, no, he had no time. History passages When he ran out the door, somebody on the street . asked him where he was going, and he called out, in Eng lish, Tm going to work and I'm late." He laughed and ran up the block, to the Blu-White Taxi Co. Once they wrote passages in history textbooks about . people like Eddie Zambrano. He came to this country from Ecuador on a student visa and instead took a job. Now in New York, they hang up posters against aliens like him. Ve have become afraid of the blood that created us. The Zambrano family, which lives neatly and quietly in the basement apartment of an attached brick house, made it in this city by the mother, Enriqueta doing out. side sewing on a big machine in the dining room; by the oldest brother, Ernie, working as a mechanic in Brooklyn by day and a cabdriver until midnight at night; by Eddie driving the cab full time; by Abe working part-time through high school, and by Fabian, 1 3, delivering papers after school. When Eddie Zambrano started work a little bit fate last Saturday night, he was given car No. 1, a Checker cab with a bullet-proof partition. Eddie was in such a hurry to get out that he did not notice that the partition behind him was open. Chicken leg. At 10:30 he stopped at his house on the way back from a call. He honked the, horn and asked his brother Abe to bring him up something to eat. Abe walked out with a chicken leg. Eddie took it and drove away on a call. At 3 a.m., Eddie had a call to Morris Avenue and 166th Street, in what has now become, through flame and vio lence, a part of the South Bronx. At 3:10 a.m., Eddie called to the dispatcher on the radio that he had made a pickup. It is uncommon for the driver of a radio dispatched cab to call in a return trip. They get very few of them, and when they do, the money goes directly into the pocket. "That's $4.75 for the return," the night dispatcher, William Evangelista, called over the radio to Zambrano. Then Evangelista said to the others in the office, "That's an honorable kid." Don't take call "I'd like it better if he didn't take that call," one of the drivers, Bob Pomeroy, said. - A half hour later, Evangelista called over the radio "Car one." There was no answer. "Car one' he called again. A moan came through the receiver "What do you call this?" Evangelista said to himself. Car one, let me hear you," he called out. Now there was no sound on the radio. Evangelista called for his drivers to start looking in the area of Schieffelin Avenue, where Zambrano was supposed to be heading. Then Evangelista called up several other radio-dispatched companies and asked them to help. A half-hour later, the dispatcher from another cab company called Evangelista and said that the blue and white Checker cab had been spotted, parked up against the side of another car. The headlights were on and the motor was running. 4A quick one' Evangelista called the 47th Precinct. He says the cop who took the call told htm, "What are you worried about? He's inside for a quick one. He'll be right back." Evangelista hung up and dialed the police emergency number, 9 U, This kid Zambrano wouldn't know how to stop to play, Evangelista told himself. Bob Pomeroy; in one of the company's cabs, got to Schieffelin Avenue before the police. When he walked up to the Checker, he found Eddie Zambrano sitting straight up at the wheel. Eddie's eyes were wide open and there was a bullet in his temple. Zambrano was the second cabdriver killed in the Bronx Saturday night. Whoever did it to Zambrano used a .22 and killed him for about $80. Eddie Zambrano's family, smothered by the surprise of death, were motionless in their apartment. To the hospital Ernie, the older brother, was saying: "My mother woke up to answer the phone and when she heard them speaking English, she had them get me. The man on the phone told me it was, important. They had found my brother. Possibly a heart attack. "I went to the hospital myself. When I walked up to them, all the policemen there began to go away from me. Then one of them said he was dead already, but they didn't want to tell me. I went inside and he was dead. He was" -he touched his temple- "shot in the head." "See?" an aunt said. "He was so proud of his soccer." She held out a clipping from the school paper of the State University at Canton. It said, "Jose Zambrano (his real name) did an outa-site job as goalie in our victory." Then the aunt showed a color picture of Eddie sitting at a drawing board. This was when he was taking an architecture course, she explained. "All the brothers working and he was a school, it made him sick," the aunt said. "He was not supposed to work on a student visa. He didn't care. Anything he had to do exhausted him. He was so nervous. But he worked six nights a week." Wounded eyes The mother sat on the living room couch, charcoal smudges under large dark wounded eyes. Her youngest sonile,t in front of her- she had a hand on his head. Fabian, you're beautiful, we love you," one of the women said. The boy's eyes filled. "Fabian, finish first m your race the next time," one of the men said. Fabian smiled. Copyright 1977. Jimmy Breslin Biitnbutd by tha Chicajjo Tribune, New York Nam Syndicate, Inc. fiV n IT TRUE WT WHO) I :r,4 hs you GETYcm vimM I .tp y tebtu pom, you W " U j L& COME OF a( r AjPx X rf ii-rvw? lvsw. r f fu