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daily nebraskan
friday, december 1, 1978
opinioneditorial
Daily Nebraskan recognizes coverage inadequacies
The Daily Nebraskan has been
criticized for not being more con
cerned with campus activities. Gen
erally 80 percent of the stories pub
lished cover campus events or organ
izations. The other 20 percent can
be classified as news or features
outside the university that would
interest the university community.
The concept that the Daily Neb
raskan is not concerned with campus
activities is absurd. It is our duty and
responsibility to inform the univer
sity community about what is
happening on campus and that's
exactly what we do.
However, it is not our duty to
feed any special interest group's ego
or become a public relations news
letter for any such group.
If negative or positive facts are
learned about a group or event,
which in our opinion constitutes
news, it is the paper's responsibil
ity to print these facts.
Another issue has been raised
claiming that the Daily Nebraskan
ignores east campus events. We went
through our files and found 47
stories from this semester which
were related to east campus.
These stories cover most aspects
of east campus and include such
events such as UNL's Agricultural
Symposium, Sadie Hawkins Dance,
Ag Careers Day, a UNL audiology
department feature, Ag Men's Run
to the Rockies, an informative
piece on this year's continuing dental
education program, Leon Jaworski's
speech at the Law College, ASUN's
book exchange in the East Union
and many more.
We realize that East Campus is a
gold mine of stories and we have not
covered everything possible.
We have advertised for an East
Campus Bureau Chief and we have
not found anyone who is qualified
and wants the job. However, we do
have a reporter who enjoys her beat
and turns in a variety of stories con
cerning east campus.
And the Daily Nebrakan welcomes
story ideas from people and we use
the ideas that we consider of news
value or interest to the university
community.
If people are upset with the Daily
Nebrakan's coverage on a particular
event, they are entitled to state their
opinion and many write a letter to
the editor to air their complaints. We
try to run every signed letter as space
and timeliness permits.
But it is the editors' responsibility
to judge what constitutes news and
is therefore printed in the paper.
The Board of Regents in 1918
recognized this fact, stating: "The
editorial policies of the Studnet Pub
lications shall be entirely in the
hands of student editors and no
faculty member or university officer
shall interfere in such policies. . ."
Bold, proud feminism of Margaret Mead misunderstood
Washington-Many of the tributes to
Margaret Mead in the past week hailed her
as a bold and proud feminist. A number of
admirers echoed the sentiment of the New
York Times, which noted that Dr. Mead's
feminism was of such ardency that "she
married and shed three husbands without
taking their names or subordinating her
work to theirs."
Colman
fTlcCarthL)
If those are some of the standards by
which feminists should be judged marry
ing, shedding husbands and keeping a maid
en name -then the towering Sisters of this
century are Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa
Gabor. And the lowest of rank must be
given to unmarried Gloria Steniem and
Betty Goldstein Friedan, who was divorced
from her husband but not his name.
Valued marriage
The case for Margaret Mead's feminism
has nothing to do with her failed marriages.
1 have read much of Mead's work and
heard a few of her lectures and I never had
the sense that she took pride in marrying
and divorcing three times. If anything,
these personal misadventures were
regretted.
Her 55-year career in anthropology, by
which she became a one-person dynasty,
had been a powerful examination of re
lationships within families and what they
mean to the stability of the individual and
community. But here she was herself-the
taker of three husbands by age 34. She
couldn't help being wounded, nor could
she avoid the sorrow of getting little emot
ional benefit from an institution -mar-riage-that
she emphatically valued intellec
tually. Sign of toughness
That is nothing new among intellectuals.
Theories are beautiful, reality messy. The
social scientist who can write the stunning
ly profound book on the decay of society
can be helpless at home to understand a
spouse's depression or the children's drift
into purposelessness.
The spirit of contemporary times has
become a public address system for the
tinny message that bouncing in and out of
marriages, affairs and beds is a sign of
toughness. To link Margaret Mead with this
absurdity is to misrecognize the toughness
that her feminism truly did have. Its
strength came in criticism and balance ne
brought to the current renewal of the
women's movement. She refused to
encourage women to believe the cant that
their victimization excused them from the
demands of intelligence and grace.
Don't hiss
She had been around too long to get
carried away by what seemed to many
women in 1968 as a "new" issue. In 1970.
with the sisterhood's novices in high fervor,
she bristled when, during a lecture, a list
ener hissed at the mention of YWCA
"Don't you go ssst." Mead said, "don't
you dare hiss at the YWCA, which has ed
ucated more women in more areas of the
world than any other organization."
Mead's feminism was never reducible
to bumper sticker jargon. She understood
that abortion needs to be as legally avail
able to the poor as the rich, but to leave it
at that was to allow the discussion to
dangle. Instead, she argued, "We should
not be promoting abortion as a way of life.
To argue for a woman's right to abortion
is absurd. Women have a right to institu
tions which will see to it that they never
have an unwanted child."
Discipline to routine
Changing institutions has little to do
Wednesday, Nov. 29th was declared
Palestine Day by the United Nations. This
may not mean anything to you unless you
are familiar with the Palestinian issue.
But to the Palestinian nation this means a
lot of things.
It means that we are no longer consider
ed as terrorists, roaming the world, blowing
up things and killing people, but as a
naion with a just cause. This is a giant step
forward for the solution of this problem
because the world will recognize us as a
people fighting to regain their land and
their pride. This will show our opposers
that there is such a thing as a Palestinian
nation.
It comes as an answer to a statement by
the ex-Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir,
when she said that there is no such thing as
a Palestinian nation. It also shows the Tight
ness of our cause and our struggle and that
we don't fight for the sake of fighting, but
for something much greater than that -our
land and our identity.
For the Palestinians, this day is a day
for celebration and jubliee because after 30
years of world indifference, the name Pale
stine will be heard all over the world, and
because we Palestinians will be recognized
as a nation with a just cause.
I ask you to join our celebration by
asking you to accept our cause as the right
cause, and our people as a nation struggling
to establish a democratic, secular state in
Palestine.
If you feel that this is sufficient inform
ation, please feel free to ask any Palestinian
with the headier thrills of the movement -writing
feminist novels, applauding films
which wives walk out on husbands or
marching at the next ERA rally. Instead,
it demands much of the same discipline or
fidelity to routine that marked Mead's
career. Nothing lasting can be created with
out it. She didn't become a redoubtable
social critic by accident. She embraced as
necessary all the dryness and tedium de
manded by her profession. She worked
through it.
By doing so, she created a bond with
other women who refused to be defeated
student; you will see him on campus walk
ing with a big smile on his face, a smile of
content, satisfaction and victory.
Tareef Nashashibi
Organization idealistic
The letter from the Organization of
Arab StudentsNebraska is an excellent
example of the abandonment of reason
and reality in favor of the twilight world of
idealism.
Every paragraph flings rhetoric and the
old cliches used by the dreamer to define
and solve every problem. Everything is so
neat and simple. Their justice is
obviously the only justice and it's only
those racist Zionists and the nasty imper
ialists which are preventing them from
implementing the "only" solution (The
Final Solution9) to the Palestine problem.
Hell, they're not even prejudiced. They
got rid of that in their arduous struggle to
"liberate" Paletstine from the racist Zion
ist movement.
You see, Israel isn't really a state It's
just a Zionist movement. The only solution
is, of course, the establishment of a free
democratic Arab Palestine State. A state
where all men will live in peace, ustice
and freedom, regardless of religious pref
erence. Every me can see how it worked in
Lebanon
by the dryness and tedium of life, what
ever role fortune or Providence put them
in. Women who are homemakers (a word
Mead didn't think insulted anyone), fact
ory workers or paraprofessionals are liber
ated not when they have the power to shed
the painful but when they use the pain to
grow into fuller human beings, and move
on from there. Anyone, woman or man,
who thinks that pain can be avoided inevit
ably learns that growth, too, has been
avoided.
(Copyright), 1978, The Washington Post
Co.
Before submitting my remarks to the
Daily Nebrakan allowed several Arab stu
dents to read it. They pointed out that my
letter implied 1 was strongly anti-Arab and
Pro-Israeli. I would like to make it clear
that I am neither. The point in writing
my letter was to emphasize the unrealistic
approach the Arab students are taking in
their policy toward Israel.
Like most other controversies, there
are two sides, both of which have suppor
tive arguments. Justice for one is usually
at the expense of the other. Compromise
is the only road I suggest for both Israel
and the Palestinian people. The dogmatic
insistence that Israel be destroyed as a state
will only forment further unrest. Like wise,
the failure of Israel to accept the Palestin
ian people as a national entity will also
forment further unrest.
Charles J. Rosvold
Microbiology, Chemistry , Chemical Engr.
5th year senior
Sponsorship explained
After the article on the Daniel EUsberg
lecture appeared in the Daily Nebrakan
(1129). there has been some question
concerning the sponsorship of the program.
Because the Voluntarily Funded Speakers
Account is a new development, an explan
ation of its function and the role of those
groups contributing to it is necessary.
Continued on Page 5
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