daily ncbrakan
tuesday, September 10, 1230
sn
City hits students hard with parking fine increase
Last week city parking tickets went up to $3,
after costing only 51 for several years.
While volumes could be written on how the
decision might increase bicycle parking problems
at UNL and at the same time prove a valuable
contribution to energy conservation, the issue is
more serious than that.
It's more serious for anyone who has to pay
200 percent more than they used to for commit
ing the horrible crime of staying on about 50
square feet of public property for too long, with
out paying.
It might be pure coincidence that two years
ago city figures showed a $3,000 increase in park
ing revenue during school months, but we doubt
it. The city can now expect a healthy $9,000 a
month from the university community. That's
almost enough money to pay for one full-time
parking ticket writer.
The city's selective enforcement of parking
near the university shows that it knows where the
money is-the students. Soak 'em, they can afford
it.
Repentant Liberals recant
problem-producing ideas
There is a cartoon in this office. An Arab
(apparently), is talking over the phone. "First you
make them dependent on your product," he says.
Then you corner the market so they can't afford
to go anywhere else. Then hire some lobbyists
and claim inflationary production costs. And
finally hit 'em with a 30 percent price hike.
"Got it?"
"Got it," answered Mr. Zip, one of the U.S.
Postal Service's logos.
The city must have seen the cartoon.
Students must park, at least in the winter, or
if they live quite some way from campus. (Maybe
the city is trying to increase bus ridership, since it
owns the Lincoln Transportation System.)
Since UNL parking lots sell out and fill up, and
since the city uses arrest warrants instead of rhino
boots, the market almost is cornered. The city
owns the streets, which helps.
Well, they didn't have to hire any lobbyists,
since the City Council can approve parking fine
increases. So they hit 'em with a 200 percent in
crease. Got it?
Nearly every city-owned parking meter near
the City Campus (there aren't any near East
Campus) is a one-hour meter. That means
students must perform the feat of walking from
their car to a 50-minute (or longer) class and walk
back, virtually assured that one of Lincoln's finest
will be right there to place the ticket under the
wiper if more than one hour passes. They are
terribly efficient.
Maybe the city can use some of its new revenue
to replace the one-hour meters with two-hour
equipment. That only seems fair.
But then again, maybe one of the council
members, who works on campus, and another
one, who campaigned for the student vote, argu
ing that students haven't been represented by the
council, don't care.
Or maybe they don't realize that $3 means
more than $1.
Or maybe they don't think students should
park in those city-owned spaces on the south edge
of the university's largest campus.
We'd like to know. -
BOSTON-Sooner or later it was bound
to happen. Sooner or later the liberals
would run out of New Frontiers of guilt
and seize upon the last one: their own
liberalism.
For decades, the liberal conscience was
like those insatiable bacteria engineered to
gobble oil spills. It went about devouring
guilt about racism and sexism, class and
carcinogens, phosphates, leaded gas, and
assorted social ills that spread out across
the surface of society.
Liberals held the genetic patent on guilt.
So, they were predestined to turn in
ward and devour themselves. What is more
typical, quintessentially liberal than feeling
guilt about liberalism?
Now, if you have been away or depress
ed, you may have missed the chorus of mea
culpas, or the parade of the culpable meas.
But let me assure you that it's going
around. You cannot pick up the paper or
the telephone these days without hearing
from someone who has given up the ghost
along with the Volvo, and publicly confess
ed to "going too far."
Being a liberal is out; being a Repentant
Liberal is in.
A Repentant Liberal is one who has
actually read a corporate ad and agreed
UPSP 144-080
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with an article telling him WHERE THE
NEW DEAL WENT WRONG.
A Repentant Liberal is one who has, at
least once, felt uncomfortable for ever hav
ing wanted a GREAT society.
A Repentant Liberal is one who has said
out loud either "I really do have to learn
more about economics," or "Right now
social programs are a luxury," or "I don't
think I could ever vote for Reagan, but
they do have a point."
A Repentant Liberal has one of the
following:
(1) A kid in college who didn't qualify
for a loan because the parents earned "too
much" money.
(2) An elderly relative left behind in a
"changing" neighborhood.
(3) A friend who knows a guy who used
food stamps to buy steaks.
(4) A boss who got her job "because she
was a woman."
(5) A banker who won't give them a
mortgage.
(6) A brother-in-law who works for the
GSA.
(7) A kid in a big-city public high
school.
I am not downgrading the latest set of
qualms vibrating across the shaky left wing
of the country. At some time or another, I
have said, or had, almost all of the above.
It is absolutely clear that every major
change has what the policy makers call
"unintentional consequences"-what you
and I would call "rotten side effects." The
liberals didn't add the warnings to their
original labels.
But now it's all obvious. The pie isn't
getting any bigger and so it's harder to
share with more people.
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tio editor
Friday's Daily Nebraskan carried both a
story and an editorial about faculty
morale. Certainly faculty pay is very
important. Not only do faculty members
have to pay our mortgages and support our
families, but we, like everyone else, live in
a society where value is measured largely
by the size of a paycheck.
However, faculty morale is not simply
proportional to faculty salaries. We need to
believe that the administration and regents
value the things we believe are important,
the things for which we spend our lives.
But the regents and administration
trample on the things that are valuable to
the faculty. The decision to wipe out the
Centennial Education Program is a flagrant
case in point.
Centennial is the one program on
campus dedicated to free in intellectual in
quiry with no disciplinary constraints or
vocational necessities. Centennial is the one
program in the university where faculty
members regularly experience the excite
ment of team-teaching with faculty from
other departments as well as experimenting
with unusual teaching techniques.
Centennial was for instance, the first
program in the region-not just the univer-sity-to
use video disc technology in the
classroom.
Important as faculty salaries are, the
UNL faculty is too dedicated to measure
its worth only by money. The university
must include in its priorities room for ex
cellence and experimentation, things like
the Centennial Education Program.
Much as I need to be paid what I am
worth, there is no way I could ever buy
what I learned in my two years as a Cen
tennial Fellow -. I would respect this uni
versity's commitment to its faculty a great
deal more if this experience were to con
tinue to be available to other faculty
members.
Frances W.Kay
Associate Professor of English
More letters on Page 5
