page 4
daily nebraskan
friday, april 21, 1978
ASUN-YAF court case may have bittersweet effect
It looks like Student Court can dust off its
robes and prepare for a court case against the
Young Americans for Freedom.
Judging from the heated reactions YAF has
evoked in many students, this may turn out to be
one of the most emotional cases in recent court
history. But despite the political intrigue this
issue may create, it is more important to examine
what this court case is going to mean.
At this point, those hoping for a brilliant vic
tory against YAF may be bitterly disappointed.
Although it is up to ASUN President Ken Mar
ienau to recommend action to be taken against
YAF, it seems unlikely that YAF will be abol
ished. Marienau has said that he is personally op
posed to revoking the YAF constitution.
As it is now, YAF meets off campus and
receives no student fee support. If the court rules
against YAF, it stands to lose the use of the stu
dent bank (its account has had a long-standing
balance of $17), free rental opportunities in the
Nebraska Unions and the "prestige" of being a
recognized student organization.
ASUN officials have proposed development of
an ethics code for student organizations, based on
a subcommittee investigation of a UNL YAF let
ter mailed last fall.
Now this is a positive action, and one we ap
plaud wholeheartedly.
This ASUN-YAF case, whenever it happens,
will not be too effective in stopping the flow of
YAF letters sent statewide.
The letters protesting the use of mandatory
fees for speaker programs and the more recent
ones demanding that NUPIRG give up its rent
free space in the Nebraska Union have been creat
ed, typed and mailed by the state YAF chapter.
The student fee letter was endorsed by the pre
sident of the campus chapter, but that is the ex
tent of the campus YAF's involvment in the letter
campaigns.
Perhaps the ASUN-YAF case will bring about
positive changes for student organizations.
But no matter which way the court rules, state
wide activity will continue.
ASU
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State legislators deserve
credit for override of veto
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The Legislature is to be compli
mented for its override of Gov. J.
James Exon's veto of capital
appropriations at UNL.
In a 30-9 vote, an excellent mar
gin, the state senators restored
money for plans to restore and
renovate UNL buildings.
Some of these buildings are in dire
need of improvement, and it is heart
ening to see the Legislature has the
same opinions.
Architectural Hall and the Former
Law Building need the renovation. A
competition last fall produced some
excellent designs for the planned
improvement and it would be good
to see them used.
: The money the Legislature restored
in LB956, the state capital-construction
appropriation, will help reach
that goal.
The Architectural Hall is register
ed in the National Register for
Historic Places and deserved added
attention.
In addition, the restored money in
the bill will be used in planning im
provements for the Temple Theater
Building, which, like the Architect
ural Hall, can use the attention.
To see such support of the uni
versity's physical condition, as well
as the academic condition, is out
standing. Both adequate monies for faculty
salaries and adequate facilities where
the students can be taught are
extremely important to the univer
sity and its ability to attract top
knotch students and faculty.
The Legislature deserves credit for
helping reach these often allusive
goals.
Centennial College alters some experimental 'traditions
Centennial Education Program is not
repeat, not becoming traditional next year,
despite what you may have read in this
space last Friday.
The program housed at Neihardt Resi
dence Center is not only adopting the
methods of traditional university depart
ments, it is even altering some of its own
traditions.
The result is less tradition and more
experimentation, which is Centennial's
purpose.
Wdldei
Normally, I wouldn't begin a column in
such a negative tone. The reason is that the
headline over it last . Friday, "Centennial
program becomes traditional in 10th year"
was wrong.
Superficially, some changes in Centen
nial's registration process substitute
structure for the near anarchy of the past
eight years. But the underlying commit
ment to alternative, innovative education
appears to be untouched.
Among the changes is a course des
cription booklet outlining 18 vaguely titled
three-hour courses; this replaces open regi
stration for six-hour block labelled only
Centennial Course." One effect is to move
the decision time for what to study from
the first two weeks of a semester to the
middle of the previous semester.
The loss of some flexibility is compen
sated by a gain in quality, according to
former Senior Fellow Barbara Smith.
This may be a desirable move for UNL's
most prominent experiment in education.
Time will tell, as with any experiment. But
I still have some reservations.
The expected gain in quality on Cen
tennial's academic side may prove too
costly on other fronts
At the root of Centennial is the belief
that education should mean personal and
intellectual growth of the student, not just
short -term retention of information. The
coercion of grades and faculty pressure is
at best unproductive. Centennial believes
that the best environment in which to
develop self-motivation is one which allows
a student to design his own educational
goals and methods.
Former Fellow Roger Welsch wrote in
1974 the best definition of Centennial that
1 have seen: "It is a program of processes
rather than items, and the principal process
is learning -not learning any particular
thing, to be sure, but learning how to learn,
a process missed by most of the general
public and a distressingly large part of the
University community."
With luck, Centennial can keep from
lapsing into the easy standard formulas for
learning. Easy for faculty because their
authority is not challenged nor their
methods questioned; easy for students be
cause they can drift into an undergraduate
degree without taking the risk of identify
ing their own values.
Without luck, new Centennial fellows
will find the revised program format similar
enough to the mainline departments from
which they come that they will feel little
pressure to try any but familiar teaching
methods.
Smith, who this month became the dean
of an experimental college in Washington,
argues that this program deterioration
won't happen.
She also disagrees with my opinion that
one of the best effects of Centennial is
floundering. By this theory, developed
during debates on the Commons Room
carpet in years past, new students bring
with them a trunkful of long-held ideas
about what education is.
Under the old system, said student finds
himself in an alien land, where the old
ways don't work. He waits around for
someone to tell him what to do. But in
stead of teaching, the professors are talking
about self-motivation, and academic
exploration.
The student is enrolled for six hours of
credit, but has nothing in particular to
study, except what he can scrounge up for
himself, either alone or in groups.
Al Dittmer, UNL ombudsman, describ
ed the process in the 1974 "The Centennial
Experience": "In many instances, the stu
dent for the first time in his life is really
given the choice to choose, and he reacts
by sitting back and choosing to do noth
ing." Doing nothing, he wrote, is a very
important transition stage between being
'others' directed and being self-directed."
In a vacuum of coercion, the flounder
ing students, as former fellow Sky Houser
wrote (op. cit.) "need a chance to test out
the notion that the values bv which thev
organize their lives are, in fact, their values,
and not merely intellectual hand-me-downs."
In self-directed study, according to
Houser, students "are immediately con
fronted with the boundaries of their own
(and the Fellow's) ignorance; this aware
ness tends to increase, not diminish, if the
project succeeds. They are denied the
solace provided by the answer to the
question; 'What do we have to know for
the test?' The answers io their questions
must suit themselves, though it is part of
the Fellow's role to influence their
standards and prevent them from too easy
satisfaction."
If Centennial can preserve this spirit of
self -confrontation in its 10th year, it will
continue as the most vital source of fresh
ness in the academic community. If not, it
is time for more experimentation.
o She editor
A university has often been described as
an institution of higher learning, where a
plethora of diverse ideas and viewpoints
may be expressed.
The Women's Resource Center provides
many services. I have used many services of
WRC and have never known them to make
a referral to an unlicensed physician or dis
reputable agency,
I believe it safe to assume that everyone
will not agree all the time. I do, however,
find it repressive when another does not
merely disagree with me - but deprives me
of my freedom of opinion through denial
of choice.
Robin Buchman
Senior, University Studies
Who's the turkey?
Cinema critic J. Marc Mushkin, must
realize that one of the hazards of publish
ing one's comments is that people will read
them. So I offer no apology when in reply
to his panning of "An Unmarried Woman."
I inform him that he is wrong; the turkey
in the theater was he, not the movie
"An Unmarried Woman" is a rich,
hearty slice of life, fresh, 1978. New York
City, in the groove of life. It's about a
woman trying to get back "into the stream
of life" after the shock, pain and disorien
tation of her husband's leaving
Jonathan Pratter
Law student