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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (June 19, 1980)
A June 11983 Summer Nebraskcn Peiroective Disguised polities is dirty politics T! O Salary raises unnecessary Three chancellors were given pay raises of more than 9 percent at the NU Board of Regents meeting Saturday. The board approved increases of 9.2 percent for UNL Chancellor Roy Young and UNO Chancellor Del Weber. NU Medical Center Chancellor Neal Vanselow was given a salary inci ase of 9.1 percent as was NU President Ronald Roskens. At the same bo rd meeting, the re gents raised tuition or students and gave faculty members let er pay raises, rang ing from 8.5 to 9 pert ent. It seems fairly ob nous who comes first with the board of regents. With drastic budget cuts, threatened program cuts, rapidly depleting cash re serves, about 120 vacant faculty positions that cannot be filled, and not enough money to fund even freshman English composition courses, it is outrageous to see administrators, who already earn muchmore than faculty members, receive such raises. Students andor their parents, through higher tuition rates, will pay these salaries. And as students and their parents pay more for the privilege of a college education, they will suffer more too. They will suffer from the inconven ience of overcrowded or closed classes that can delay graduation and make col lege more expensive than it already is. They will suffer from having overbur dened instructors who are not being paid enough to keep pace with inflation. And finally, they will suffer because they will not receive the quality of education they most certainly are paying for, and need to have in order to compete for jobs with thousands of other college graduates. The NU Board of Regents is com posed of elected officials who supposedly are representing the university's best in terests. As elected public officials they also are supposed to be responsible with the state taxpayers' money. By Randy Essex Recently, two or three cases of what appears to be a fairly new bit of naivete in political life have cropped up in news reports. It seems fairly consistent for officials to tell the public something that no rea sonable andor educated person would believe. Unfortunately, that practice has become so common that we don't even seem to notice anymore, or worse, we don't identify it. Maybe it all started with Gen. Wil liam Westmoreland's "Light at the End of the Tunnel" speech. Or, maybe it was Nixon's "Cambodia"speech. Anyway, somewhere along the line, we started to either believe, or shrug off things officials say that are too outrageous to be real. The problem is that many of these people are elected, and therefore we have the right to expect more intelligent state ments from them. This is one of the latest popular, but non-meaningful statements: "It. wasn't politically motivated." NU President Ronald Roskens said it about the Regents' five-year plan, and Gov. Charles Thone said it about Presi dent Carter's stop in Grand Island to see the tornado damage. Let's try not to be too silly. The regents are elected officials. I hate to use what apparently is a dirty word, but that makes them politicians. The running of the university has be come increasingly political with Roskens running in everybody from teachers to insurance salespersons to support last year's budget request before the Legisla ture. Vhen asked about the impressive array of support at the budget hearing, Roskens said it was not solicited. Appar ently, he expected the inquisitor to be lieve all those people just happened to drive in from all parts of the state, and it was only coincidence that no two of them represented the same interest. Sorry, President Roskens, I don't buy it. While not guided by traditional poli tics, mostly because few people take in terest in what they do, the regents are as political as any board of elected officials in the state. And. Thone's statement that Carter's trip was not politically motivated sug gests that our governor is either blind to Carter campaign tactics or has jumped from the Reagan camp and the Republi can Party. Of course, Thone really couldn't at tack Carter as using the disaster to get votes, even if that's what the president was doing. The president's visit could mean much needed federal aid for the city, and the state is not about to attack the method by which it is obtained or ap proved. And that is appropriate. The subject of this column, however is inspired by Thone's comments that Carter had no political motive. Sorry, but I can't buy that one either. Ever since Edward Kennedy started his challenge for the Democratic Presi dential Nomination, Carter has used fed eral funds in- a successful attempt to gather votes. Some, if not all, of those grants were needed, and served a good purpose. But, they also were politically motivated. Carter has done little for Miami, ap parently having written off the black vote as alienated by the battle against inflation, which blacks are fighting in dis proportionate numbers just as surely as they fought the Vietnam war in dispro portionate numbers. Yet the needs of the Liberty City sec tion of Miami are just as great as those of Grand Island. If humanitarianism is the motive for Carter's generosity, it makes no difference how a city became a disas ter.area. What matters is that people liv ing there need help. With Cuba refugees being pumped into Miami under Carter's direction, taking potential jobs, and food away from indige nous poor, Miami's needs are quite press ing. The point is this; our political system, although not perfect, is in fact a political system. And, politics and politicians aren't inherently dirty. We aren't going to make them disap pear by preteding they aren't politicaly motivated, or by saying that they aren't. The dirty politicians, to me, are the ones who try to disguise politics by telling the public that politics is not politics. It's almost 1984, 1 think. Affirmative action plan needs strong commitment By Kim Wilt It should come as a surprise to no one that the NU Board of Regents unani mously approved the university's affirm ative action plan Saturday. The regents apparently wishing to be thought of as neither reactionary nor progressive, have committed themselves to nothing more than a statement of their own version of good faith, in regard to the hiring and training of women and minorities. ' ASUN President Renee Wessels has said there are no provisions in the plan for the recruitment of women and minor ities, or for revising curriculum to recog nize that people other than white males attend this university. Furthermore, half the jobs targeted to be filled by women are secretarial or clerical Anyone with even a sketchy knowl edge of prior regental actions should have expected that such a plan immediately would meet the board's approval. Here was a made-to-order way for them to state support for their high-sounding principles of affirmative action, without actively committing themselves to hand ing over any control to those who are standing at the door, sticking in cautious toes. Perhaps it is time for more than cau tious toes. When a man can say with a straight face, as Regent Ed Schwartzkopf did, that he is "weary of these sancti monious platitudes about civil rights," that says something not only about that man, but about the quality and quantity of commitment to affirmative action, and the larger goal of eliminating sexism, rac ism and every other form of discrimina tion, at this university, and in our soci ety. When an administration can come up with such a weak, meaningless plan and a regental board can approve it (while self -righteously harrumphing that commit ment to change "must be within us" not just on paper) and all of this can seem logical, rather than surrealistic and 1984 twisted, then it is time to realize that af firmative action plans may be less than what is needed. In other words, paper goals just aren't going to do it. Can we realistically expect a white, male administration and a white, male board of regents to see affirmative action as important? If it were not for the fed eral dollars involved, does anyone believe that this issue would even be considered at all? It is time to realize that oppression is not restricted to the active proponents of discrimination, the ones who make the headlines by their membership in the Ku Klux Klan, or the ones who sexually har ass female employees or co-workers. They can at least be fought against, legally and rationally. Few would see their actions and beliefs as realistic or acceptable. It is the passive ones, those whose commitment to social justice runs about as deep as a mud puddle, who are the more dangerous. How can you argue against someone who seems to have your better interests at heart? That kind of person (or instituion) cannot be fought against as easily, be cause he, she, or it seems to be moving in the same direction you are, with the same goals and beliefs. They can make those who urge or demand change seem un grateful and shrill- "Too soon, too fast," is the slogan here, as is "Now you're asking too much. And some will agree, believing they really are asking too much, afraid they will lose whatever slender hold on equality they have been given. And therein lies the problem, because this kind of argument can make people believe that equality, and the elimination of discriminatidn is something that should be given, and gratefully received with the same kind of exclamations and thanks normally re served for eight-year-olds on Christmas morning. But watch what happens when the eight-year-old says is isn't enough, or it isn't what he, or she asked for. The word "ungrateful" is often heard in such cases. Equality isn't a privilege or a gift, it's a right. No one should have to ask for it, or settle for airy promises, or feel guilty about insisting on it. And no woman should be able to say that the lack of it doesn't affect her, or matter to her, and mean it. There is no reason for allowing change to be slow, incomplete or only on paper. It is not written anywhere that disarimination must be seen as "only" a black problem, a female problem, or a Hispanic problem. Yet, too many have accepted that this is simply the way it must be. Too many are willing to let others, usually white males, set the pace for rectificaiton of ongoing wrongs. In the play, "The Little Foxes, play wright Lillian Hellman has a character say, 'There are those who eat the earth, and there are those who stand around and watch them eat it. If the commitment to equality and elimination of discrimination continues at its current leisurely pace, we may wake up one day to find that the earth has been eaten away from under us.