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daily nebraskan
friday, november 10, 1978
opinioneditorial
Women, minorities hold too few administrative positions
Today is the last day there will be
a woman in an administrative
position in the NU Central Admini
stration .
Barbara Coffey, Equal Opportu
nity Coordinator is leaving. She was
in charge of affirmative action on all
three campuses when she arrived in
1971. Now that each campus has an
affirmative action officer, her po
sition as coordinator is no longer
needed, she said.
Coffey said women and minorities
who would hold high ranking posi
tions, such as Ph.D.'s, usually
advance, and when they do, they
usually leave UNL.
Salaries paid at UNL rank in the
bottom 20 percent of the nation, ac
cording to Brad Munn, UNL affirm
ative action officer. Highly qualified
women and minorities have to decide
if they want to work at NU for a
relatively low salary.
The blame for this voter registration
mtess-up may be pointing in the wrong dir
ection. So ASUN made a mistake. Who
doesn't?
The real responsibility for registering to
vote or requesting an absentee ballot lies
undeniably with the citizen. In no way
shape or form is it government's respon
sibility to solicit voter registration. If any
thing, ASUN should be commended for its
registration efforts.
I would like to remind the "non -voting
majority" how they can execute their
privilege to vote. If you are eighteen years
of age or older, you can stop by your
county clerk's office any week of the year,
Monday through Friday, and register to
vote. You are then a registered voter for
life unless you change permanent residence
to another precinct, change name or party
affiliation.
If you will be away from this precinct
on election day, you must within 35 days
preceding election day either request an
absentee ballot at the clerk's office or mail
in such a request. Be sure to include your
present address and signature. The method
costs 1 5 cents.
Carter Kerk
Junior
Engineering
Rah, rah, ree
On behalf of the Interfraternity Rela
tions committee, I would like to extend an
invitation to every UNL student to attend
the pep rally today at 6:00.
We have been working on program
unifying events between our fraternities.
This pep rally is one of these events, with
fraternities pairing up and doing yells to
gether. But we decided to go a step further
and include the residence halls in our yell
contest. Hopefully, this will help our re
lations with the residence halls also.
We all want to beat Oklahoma this year,
so we need all students to back our Corn
huskers. Let's start tonight at 6:00 on R
Street in front of the Union, and show our
support.
Pete Allman
President, Interfraternity Council
Dissatisfied voter
I find it very disappointing that neither
the bottle bill or the Solar Energy Tax
Relief bill went through this election. I can
understand the bottle bill not having a
chance. After all, everywhere you turned
you saw "Vote No on 301," for months
prior to election. But don't be concerned,
half-inquisitive voters probe into who spon
sored that propaganda? Doesn't one get
just a little suspicious when most posters
were plastered over Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola,
and Budweiser trucks? It's grotesquely
obvious why these corporations don't want
any part of the burden put upon them for
Lincoln has a small minority pop
ulation. It's one thing to be accepted
by your colleagues and it's another
to be accepted socially.
This kind of situation pulls blacks
away from the university, Coffey
said.
A lot needs to be done with de
partment heads, according to Coffey.
The situation in which women were
brought in as assistant professors and
left there until retirement is long
gone.
Women are a dynamic part of the
work force and they will ' not
tolerate staying behind, while white
men climb up the ladder.
Since 1972, NU has legally
mandated that women and minori
ties be given the same opportunity as
white males.
But the ranks of women and
minorities in administrative positions
are low. In the UNL administration,
cleaning up our countryside, it just might
mean investing their own money into such
a project.
But now who pays? We do, because no
one else will take on the burden. Only a
few of us concerned citizens go through
the hassle of saving cans to be returned to
recycling centers. Some need monetary
reasons to motivate them into returning
bottles and cans, and if it means it's their
money they're throwing away, they'll
return every bottle and can to be re -used.
As I said, I can understand 301, being
defeated, but I am still stunned at the loss
of the solar energy bill. Why? Who could
possibly not want to encourage the clean
est, most natural source of energy? Solar
energy is free, not controlled by Gulf Oil
or any other politically powerful corpor
ations. I suspect the next issue in Nebraska will
be which corporation to let build a nuclear
power plant.
Think about it Nebraskans, do you want
our future generations to have to deal with
plutonium wastes when instead we could
be using a more efficient, non-polluting
source of energy such as solar energy?
Very concerned citizen
Ann Schleppenbach
Dental Hygiene
Senior
In heaven ... no beer
Since the Daily Nebraskan objects to
the Mr. Knobby-Knees and Miss Legs
contest, and since the Daily Nebraskan has
never done a philanthropy project, perhaps
the Daily Nebraskan should do an AUF
project of their own.
I suggest the Daily Nebraskan staff con
sider going on an alcohol fast. Every time
the staff has the urge to drink beer in the
office, they resist temptation and donate
the money saved to AUF. This could con
ceivable raise hundreds of dollars for AUF
within a week.
Rockford G. Yapp
AUF
Suzanne Brown, assistant to the Vice
Chancellor for Student Affairs, is the
only woman.
Jimmi Smith, a black, is director
of Multi-Cultural Affairs, a minority
counseling service.
Hazel Anthony is the Dean of the
College of Home Economics. Ralph
Grajeda is Director of Ethnic
Studies. And that's about it for
administrative positions held by
women and minorities.
Each department head has goals
and time tables established to ful
fill affirmative action regulations.
They must annually be evaluated,
according to NU by-hnvs, showing
that they made a good faith effort to
recruit women and minorities.
Yet their jobs are not on the line.
Job openings must be advertised and
sometimes departments have an un
expected opening and not have time
to recruit. So they may call the af
firmative action office to try to get
around the red tape.
Coffey said all this shows her is
that they have a white male who can
fill the spot.
"The university is making every
effort to say to department heads,
we will as a university have some
standards to fill the vacancies," Cof
fey said.
A scrutinizing glance at the Centrex di
rectory will yield an admittedly incom
plete, but mildly interesting notion of the
number of women and ethnic minorities
employed in administrative or high level
faculty positions.
kate gaul
An analysis of the numbers reveals that
they generally are employed in traditional
fields (the only woman dean is in Home
Ec; a Chicano is director of Ethnic
Studies), fields where the status quo isn't
shaken nor the white male bastion of
power rocked.
Not that I'm being hostile or discount
ing the importance of these positions or
the capability of these people. I just like
to sound angry because it gives me a radi
cal image.
Not that I'm saying UNL is discrimina
tory in hiring practices, but current
employment patterns reflect a history of
across the board discrimination, whether
that discrimination is in hiring, education
or attitudinal.
Talking specifically about women,
Suzanne Brown, assistant to the vice chan
cellor for student affairs, said it is very dif
ficult to change the long-standing patterns.
She called the pattern informal and intan
gible, but names it as part of the reason
there are no women regents, one dean, one
administrator and seven department chair
women (my count).
And, as Brown pointed out, men are
This applies not only to
educational quality, but requirement
equality, she said.
In many schools, department
heads' salary increases are dependent
upon not only a review of how they
have recruited for women and mi
norities, but on how well they have
done their jobs.
Many times men hear about pos
sible job advancements through the
grapevine, by going to the golf
course or cocktail parties with the
boss. Women and minorities tra
ditionally do not attend such
functions.
This is the reason NU must ad
vertise for positions that are open so
everyone has an equal chance to
apply for the job.
The university has an adequate
policy, but it is not adequately en
forced .
President Roskens has set goals
committed to affirmative action.
Yet, NU is faced with a small minori
ty community, the fact that it ranks
in the bottom 20 percent of the pay
scale, and old traditional values held
by department heads.
Women and minorities are coming
up in the ranks, they are just as qual
ified as white men and the old tra
ditional values must go.
not the sole culprits. She drew a distinc
tion between women and other minorities:
not all women agree that the status quo
should be changed, whereas you would
be hard pressed to find a black who
believed she belonged in the ghetto.
Brown said many women do not like to
work for another woman. It's the classic
case of not having a woman VIP because
the "girls" in the office would be
uncomfortable.
A more substantial reason for the ab
sence of women and one that is probably
equally valid for the lack of high level
racial minorities, is that there is just a
smaller pool to choose from. Brown said
that in a batch of job applications, men
outnumber women 15 to one. "And the
woman must be pretty good."
There is a big, affirmative action in
spired demand to hire women and racial
minorities. Th ose that are highly quali
fied can pretty much choose where they
go. UNL has been defined as a "low com
petitive market" which, translated, means
nobody with those qualifications (includ
ing minority status) wants to work here.
The Association of American Univers
ity Professors rates UNL pay scales in the
"bottom 20 percent."
Barbara Coffey, outgoing Equal Op
portunity Coordinator shed some interest
ing light on the low number of racial mi
nority faculty. She observed that Nebras
ka's low minority population restricts any
comfortable social atmosphere -she com
pared it to a white person living in a
barrio-culturally Nebraska is pretty bleak
for minorities.
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