Paqe 4
Daily Nebraskan
Thursday, March 4, 1982
Editorial
ASUN must emphasize issues rather than image
It's Thursday, and by this time we may or may not
have a new ASUN president and senate. The vagaries of
ballot tabulation and the potential for recounting make it
impossible to tell whether the smoke has finally cleared
around the annual ASUN shootout.
No matter who gets the job, the new ASUN president
faces a whole set of built-in problems, most of which
center on ASUN's public image.
The new ASUN president, like any other politician on
any level, inherits the accumulated public disgust for
everybody who has ever been elected to that office in the
past and the accumulated public disgust for politicians in
general. The politician who mistakes the glad-handing and
back-slapping from his or her close circle of supporters for
the attitude of the entire constituency is in for a rude
awakening when the celebrations end and the business be
gins. Like the regents with (or against) whom he or she
must now work, the new ASUN president must learn that
becoming an elected official does not automatically make
one a respected official. To steal a line from John House
man, in politics you get respect the old fashioned way;
you earn it.
The problem that specifically affects the new ASUN
president is the apathy and benign mistrust Joe and Jane
Student maintain toward ASUN. Give the typical UNL
student uncaptioncd pictures of Bud Cuca, Rence Wessels
and Rick Mockler, and a solid majority would correctly
identify Renee Wessels as the female. Few would be able
to tell you what went on during the feigns of these three
ASUN presidents, or the many that came before them, for
that matter. More important, few would care.
If the majority of students are to see ASUN as some
thing more than a pre-Law playground andor Resume
Enhancement Society, it's not going to be because of
mock funerals, souvenir matchbooks and catchy slogans.
Nor will the same old "We're here to serve students"
rhetoric carry any weight. Nor will the chosen route of
the administration, the public relations blitz, do the trick.
For ASUN to work effectively, it has to understand
that most students don't care about the in-housc power
struggles at ASUN. Everybody in the whole senate could
sue everybody else in the whole senate, and they could all
resign their offices in disgust, and some students wouldn't
care.
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1 1
Woman runs family switchboard
The little girl doesn't understand.
A boy in her first-grade class has selected her as his
recess quarry. All week he has pursued her, capturing her
scarf, circling her with it, threatening to tie her up.
The look on her face as she tells us this story is puzzled
and upset. She has brought home similar tales of play
ground encounters since Monday and laid them out across
the dinner table.
My friend, who is her mother and amused by it all,
explains again to the girl, "That's because he likes you."
But she still doesn't understand.
Finally, the mother turns to me, because I have been
through it before, seen the tears of another first-grader,
Ellen Goodman
offered the same motivations. "Tell her," says the mother
in frustration.
I begin to form the analysis in my mind. I will tell her
how the boy wants attention, doesn't know how to ask
for it, only knows how to grab for it, confuses aggression
with affection . . .
Then suddenly I stop.
I hear an odd echo from the words inside my head.
What is it? An echo of a hundred generations of women
interpreting males to their daughters? An echo of a
hundred generations of women teaching their daughters
the fine art of understanding human behavior?
All at once I find myself reluctant to pass on this
legacy. I am wary of teaching this little girl the way to
analyze. I am not so sure at this moment that we should
raise more girls to be cultural interpreters for men, for
families.
I look at my friend. This woman is admirably skilled in
the task of transmitting one person's ideas and feelings to
another. Indeed she operates the switchboard of her
family life.
The people in her home communicate with each other
through her. She delivers peace messages from one child
to another, softens ultimatums from father to son, ex
plains daughter to father. Under her constant monitoring,
the communication lines are kept open: one person stays
plugged into the next.
But sometimes I wonder whether she has kept these
people together or kept them apart? Docs she make it
easier for them to understand each other, or does she
actually stand between them, holding all the wires in her
hands?
Last week, I watched Katharine Hepburn play the same
role magnificently in the scenes from On OolJcn Pond.
She placed herself between the angry, acerbic, viciously
amusing husband (Henry Fonda) and the world. She was
his buffer and his interpreter - to the gas station attend
ants, the postman, the daughter.
"He wasn't yelling at you," she tells the boy who
comes to live with them. "He was yelling at life. Some
times you have to look hard at a person and remember
he's doing the best he can . . .just trying to find his way,
like you.
Her caring was wondrous, inspiring, full of energy and
love. But it was only when the boy confronted the old
man, dialing directly, short-cutting the switchboard, that
the man changed.
In Gail Godwin's new novel, A Mother and Two
Daughters, there is another aging mother, still negotiating
between her two "children" who are turning 40. She is
like the woman in many of our autobiographies - the
mother, or grandmother - behind the scenes.
How many families only know each other through
these women? Some mothers, like the one in this movie
and this book, have been forced to occupy the stormy
tulcrum ot tamily lite, and others have chosen to be the
power broker of human relationships. Some actually keep
people at peace, others keep them at bay. Sometimes the
endless interpretation, especially of men by women, keeps
couples together. Other times it keeps men from explain
ing themselves.
I know it is a skill to be able to understand and
analyze one person's motives and psyche to another. It
requires time, attention, emotional dexterity to run these
switchboards. Yet it can also overload the operator and
cripple the people from talking across their own private
lines.
Today, anyway, I feel particularly unwdling to explain
the first-grade boy to the first-grade girl, peculiarly un
willing to initiate the 6-year-old into this cult of com
munication. I offer only friendship and sympathy. These are things
she doesn't have to struggle to understand.
(c) 1982, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company
Washington Post Writers Group
The thing that would keep most students at UNL inter
ested in ASUN goings-on is self-interest. For ASUN to get
any respect, it must demonstrate that its actions arc truly
in behalf of- a majority of students. An important first
step would be to find out what a majority of students are
concerned about, whether by survey, attendance at
already scheduled residence hall and Greek house meet
ings, open solicitation of opinion or any other method
that would work. If it turns out, for example, that most
students are concerned with low faculty pay, budget cuts,
and the shrinking job market, then those are the con
cerns ASUN must address. Of course, it will seem that
there is nothing they can do about some of these issues;
the NU Board of Regents and the administration do have
the upper hand in just about every endeavor. But the
answer is not to assume one's own ineffectiveness and
stick to matters of less import. The student body is a slow
and lethargic beast, but it can be made to move when its
interests are at stake. The trick is to find out what those
interests are. The respect part will take care of itself.
Car-owner's cares
bemoaned in play
The Humiliation of Iking Towed, a new tragicomedy
that deals with the misfortunes of a car-owning college
student, has promise of becoming a nationwide hit,
according to author Borntibee Wilde.
'The play is a sensitive, emotional portrayal of life
among the meters and asphalt of this nation's universit
ies," Wilde said. "It should strive a chord in the hearts of
2
Mary Louise
Knapp
all students who have experienced the anger and frustrat
ion associated with the ownership of a vehicle."
Here are some excerpts from the play:
ACT I, SCENE 2: The main parking lot of a large uni
versity campus, a seemingly infinite stretch of concrete
and asphalt, adorned here and there with parking meters
It is late afternoon. The few cars remaining in the lot, the
heroine Amanda's among them, bear several violation
notices.
Enter Amanda's boyfriend, Steve, and Amanda, laugh
ing and joking.
AMANDA: Here, Steve, let me give you a ride home.
STEVE: (looking worried) Hey, Amanda, you've got a
couple of parking tickets here. You know, those things are
going to catch up with you one of these days!
AMANDA: (tearing them up and throwing them to the
ground) Oh, don't be such a spoilsport, Steve. The cops
will forget about them in a few days. Let's go!
ACT I, SCENE 2: Amanda's apartment. She and Steve
are sitting at the kitchen table reading each other's mail.
Steve opens a large envelope, gaes at it, and angrily
throws it at Amanda.
AMANDA: What's gotten into you?
Continued on Page 5
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