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Number 8
University of Nebraska -Lincoln
July 24, 1930
Wessels urges 18 percent
increase in tax support
By Jeanne Mohatt
University officials should request at
least an 18 percent increase in tax sup
port from, the Legislature if the univer
sity is to continue to provide students
with a quality education, ASUN presi
dent Renee Wessels said Wednesday.
Saturday the Board of Regents will
determine budget guidelines for the 1981
82 school year.
"The Board will preliminarily set the
level of funding that the university will
seek from the state as well as the tuition
rate it will expect from the students,"
Wessels said at a press conference.
The regents wUi decide on the final re
quest at their Sept. 12 meeting.
At last month's regents meeting, NU
President Ronald Roskens proposed that
the n iversity request an 18 percent in
creast: in state support for the 1981-82
schooj year. But the regents asked him to
return to this month's meeting with al
ternative budget guidelines.
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Staff photo by Janet Hammer
ASUN President Renee Wessels.
Roskens has prepared alternative
guidelines requesting 15 and 12 percent
increases besides the 18 percent increase.
He will present these alternatives to the
regents Saturday.
The non-voting student regent said
"Although an 18 percent increase is a
modest figure which will only help the
university make up for present deficien
cies, it is vital if the university is to be
taken seriously as an academic institu
tion. "The situation is desperate at UNL."
Several programs, including the Cen
tennial Educational Program, are under
consideration for elimination by regents,
in response to Regent Kermit Hansen's
five year plan, she said.
Wessels said the amount of money the
university should seek from the state has
been heavily debated in the past.
The state obviously has money to
commit to higher education, she said,
pointing out the extra $20 to $30 million
dollars available in the treasury for state
agencies.
"A lot of the fault falls on Gov.
Thone," she said. Last year he "slashed
tax assistance to 11 percent, a veto of
about $3 million."
"The quality of education at UNL has
been directly and adversely affected by
minimal appropriations in the past," she
said.
"Staggering inflation rates" have
made it impossible for the Chemistry De
partment to buy chemicals.
Eleven faculty positions in the College
of Engineering and Technology remain
unfilled because the university lacks the
money to hire professors at wages com
petitive with the market.
"The library is discontinuing subscrip
tions to-periodicals and magazines used
for research because of inadequate
Wessels continued on page 3
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Staff photo by Kathy Chenoult
GOP nominee Ronald Reagan after his acceptance speech at the Republican
National Convention. See picture story inside page 2
Agent Orange's effects not known
Irish immigrants
By Jeanne Mohatt
No one knows how dioxin, a poisonous
substance found in the chemical defoliant
Agent Orange, will effect 14 Vietnam vet
erans who were found to have traces of
the chemical in their bodies, said the di
rector of UNL's mass spectrometry labo
ratory. Michael Gross said the levels of dioxin
found in 14 of 33 men tested were not
high enough to cause death.
"But no one knows what the long
term effects will be," he-said.
The dioxin is stored in the men's fat
tissues "like all chlorinated, synthetic, or
ganic material, such as preservatives," he
said.
The dioxin is released when the person
loses weight. "But no one knows how
long it will be before it metabolizes (is
released as energy)," he said.
If one of the tested veterans were to
lose all his fat, an impossibility, Gross
said, the amount of dioxin released would
be 100 times less than the amount needed
to cause toxic or lethal effects in the gui
nea pigs they have tested.
"Humans are less sensitive" to the
substance than the tested guinea pigs, he
said.
The highest concentrations of dioxin
wc: .ound in a veteran who helped with
veration Ranchhand in Vietnam, Gross
said. Operation Ranchhand was the mili
tary operation in charge of spraying the
defoliant Agent Orange on Vietnam's
countryside. The defoliant stripped
growing plant and trees of their leaves.
Gross said the veteran was a non-commissioned
officer who handled the chemi
cal frequently, loading it into aircraft and
manning the sprays.
"This lends strong support to the be
lief that the exposure (to the poisonous
dioxin) occurred in Vietnam' h said.
Lincolnites carried on battle for Irish independence
By Jeanne Mohatt
For centuries the Irish have battled
for their independence from Great Brit
ain. Thousands -have died on many bat
tlefieldson Ballinamuck's red bog in
1798, in Dublin during the 1916 Easter
Rising, and in Belfast on Bloody Sunday
in 1969.
During the potato famine of 1845, the
Irish flooded America's shores to escape
starvation.
Some moved west and a few settled
and raised families in Lincoln;
But these Irish families did not leave
Ireland behind. The Irish immigrants
supplied money and smuggled weapons
to Irish revolutionaries.
Lincoln headquarters
In 1884, Patrick Egan, a Lincoln resi
dent, was elected president of the Irish
National League of America, an organi
zation advocating Ireland's independ
ence, Lincoln became the headquarters
for the organization. In January 1886,
John Patrick Sutton became the league's
secretary. He also moved to Lincoln.
The Irish National League of America
held its third convention in Chicago in
August 1886, and about 1,300 men
elected another Lincoln resident, John
Fitzgerald, president.
The league's history begins in 1879,
when Michael Davitt, an Irish patriot
imprisoned seven years in a British dun
geon, established the Irish Land League
upon his release. Charles Stuart Parnell,
the Irish representative to Britain's
House of Commons, gave the league his
blessing, and several branches were
formed in America, including one in Lin
coln.
In 1882, the Land League was sup
pressed in Ireland, and Parnell organized
the Irish National League. In 1883,
Irishmen and Irish-Americans met in
Philadelphia and merged the American
Land League into a new organization
called the Irish National League of
America.
Doyle said his great-grandfather was
"primarily a railroad contractor.. .and
had large farming and banking interests."
Fitzgerald came to Nebraska in 1869,
settled in Plattsmouth, and moved to
Lincoln in 1879. He built practically all of
the early-day Burlington railroad lines in
Nebraska, and he was president of the
First National Bank of Lincoln.
"We are for Irish liberty. Peacefully if
we can, otherwise if we must."
The league's purpose was to support
Parnell and his efforts to secure Home
Rule (Ireland'? independence from Brit
ain), At the Chicago convention in 1886,
President Patrick Egan said, "I see em
blazoned on these walls the motto, 'We
are for Irish liberty. Peacefully if we can,
otherwise if we must." The quote comes
from a story in the Aug. 20, 1886, edition
of the Weekly Nebraska State Journal.
The league was listed in the Lincoln
City Directory until 1893. It does not
exist today.
Lincoln's John Fitzgerald served two
terms as the league's president. Born
April 29, 1829, in County Limerick, Ire
land, he and his family came to America
in 1884 after his father was evicted from
his farm.
'Fantastic businessman
Fitzgerald was "a dynamo, a fantastic
businessman," said John "Dugie" Doyle,
his great-grandson. Doyle, of 3024 Sum
mit Blvd., is an attorney in Lincoln.
The city's first millionaire, Fitzgerald
owned real estate in Gage and Jefferson
counties 4,000 acres near Greenwood.
He also owned 30 acres in Lincoln. His
home, Mount Emerald , was on 20th
Street between B and C streets.
Despite Fitzgerald's close ties to the
Catholic Church, he gave Thomas Doane,
a strict Congregationalist, the money to
build Doane College in Crete.
He also donated money to the Holy
Child Jesus convent and St. Elizabeth
Community Health Genter in Lincoln.
"He was very active in the movement
to free Ireland from England's yoke,"
great-grandson Doyle said.
Guns stashed in basement
Stories have been told, Doyle said,
about guns stashed in the basement of
Mount Emerald. Fitzgerald's widow,
Mary Kelly Fitzgerald, denied until her
death in 1940 that the guns were for any
revolutionary purpose, but many people
are skeptical of her denial, Doyle said.
John Fitzgerald died in December
1894.
Lincoln's Patrick Egan, an Irish
patriot and the Irish National League's
1884 president, was born at Ballymahon
County, Longford, Ireland Aug. 31, 1841.
He was an important worker for the Irish
national movement for independence.
The league's Lincoln branch contrib
uted $2,400 to the Irish cause in 1885 and
$1,171 in 1888.
At the 1886 Chicago convention, Egan
said, "...not only has it (the league) done
its part in aiding and supporting the
struggle at home...it has made the cause
of Ireland respectable and respected
amongst Americans."
The battle continues
In 1979, the question of Irish inde
pendence still has not been answered.
The six predominantly Protestant coun
ties of Northern Ireland (Ulster) are still
a British province, and the Irish Republi
can Army, a Catholic terrorist group,
continues to fight for Ireland's independ
ence from Great Britain.
"I don't think historically or even now
they (the British) have the right to be
there," Doyle said. If the British were to
pull out, "civil war would come about be
cause of the factions up in the north," he
said.
In the Aug. 27, 1886, Weekly Ne
braska State Journal, Patrick Egan,
referring to the still-united country
under British rule, said:
"My every effort shall be directed to
wards keeping the green flag of Ireland
nailed to the mast until the not far dis
tant day when we shall see it wave over
an Irish parliament on College green,
making laws for a prosperous and happy
nation." said.