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Monday, October 18, 1982
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Jdlitog11
New policies
on parking
are needed
Parking is one of those things you never
worry about until you can't find a parking
place. But when there are fewer parking
stalls or meters than the number of drivers
looking for them, parking becomes a
monumental problem.
On the UNL City Campus, parking takes
on such a dimension each football Satur
day. When the Big Red plays at home -and
76,000 fans come to-watch - park
ing spots are at a premium. The problem
is complicated by a UNL parking policy.
Each football Saturday, the athletic
department leases about 25,000 stalls
from the university (at $1 each) for various
athletic booster clubs. So while members
of The Husker Award Fund, The Directors'
Club, The Touchdown Club and The Wheel
Club zip into the lots nearest Memorial'
Stadium, the students and faculty members
who purchased spaces in those lots get to
look for parking elsewhere.
According to Capt. Kenneth Markle
of the UNL police department, parking
on football Saturdays has been handled
as explained above for years (at least all
27 years that Markle has been at UNL).
And those purchasing parking permits
have been duly informed that they can't
use spots they paid $20 or $35 for (the
first price for a semester permit, the second
for a year) when the Huskers play in Lin
coln. The warning is right there on Page 15
of the 1982 UNL Parking & Traffic Regu
lations bulletin. It reads:
"Most parking facilities are closed to
regular permit holders on football Satur
days. Area 16 (just north of the Nebraska
Union) is reserved for faculty and staff
permit holders with Saturday morning
business or class on a space available
basis."
But unless you read your entire parking
bulletin, including the paragraph on Page
15, you were probably surprised the first
time you tried to use your lot on a Big
Red Saturday.
The fact that the policy has existed for
years and years doesn't make it a good one.
First students and faculty members are
issued parking permits for what- are prob
ably the most inconvenient lots on City
Campus and then the only possible benefit
of those spots - a convenient place for the
games - is denied themv
Of course the $20 or $35 that parkers
pay doesn't come near what members of
the various booster clubs pay in donations.
But boosters, supposedly, part with their
money expecting nothing in return. Park
ing customers part with their money
expecting a service in return - namely,
use of their parking lot when they want it.
Parking problems are not, though,
exclusive to football Saturday. Space
is insufficient for commuting students on
class days. Those who arrive early on cam
pus for 8:30 a.m. classes, or late for
afternoon classes easily can find space in
the "green" lots on the perimeters of
campus. But the battle for stalls between
about 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. is fierce.
And as commuting students vie for
green spaces, literally hundreds of stalls
in the red (facultystaff) parking sections
are left empty.
The remedy for this problem is simple:
shuffle lot assignments to provide more
green spaces and less red ones.
A third campus parking problem is on
R Street, between 12th and 16th streets.
The street, easily the most traveled on cam
pus, is lined with one-hour, city-monitored
meters. One hour is too little meter time;
it is not long enough for a student to
attend more than one class or to attend
meetings in the union without having to
dash out to "feed the meter."
The policy on football Saturdays and
the ratio of red to green lots create
problems that should be considered by the
UNL Parking Advisory Committee.
Parking is not a pressing problem of
our day. But the unavailability of a stall
you paid for - or a ticket for an expired
meter can su.e ruin an otherwise good
day.
NOW delegates avoid taking
strong position on lesbianism
During its annual convention in In
dianapolis last Sunday, the National
Organization for Women elected a new
president and set goals' for the coming
year. The main focus of future activities
(A Julia
) O'Gara
-.1 v I
will be on corporate sex discrimination,
particularly in the -areas of retail trade,
insurance and the textile industry.
For many, NOW has been the vanguard
of the women's movement, an organiza
tion dedicated to helping all women be
come fully enfranchised citizens.
Well, maybe not all women - not
lesbians, anyway.
Over the years, NOW has, become
one of the biggest political action com
mittees in the country, and as such has
amassed a considerable' campaign fund
somewhere in the neighborhood of $2
million. The money will go to those
candidates NOW believes best represent
the interests of women.
Because the group knows it is un
realistic to expect prospective fund reci
pients to be in total agreement with
NOW on all issues, NOW has decided
it would be a mistake to require candi
dates to support lesbian issues as a condi
tion of receiving NOW PAC-money.
"We have to draw the line somewhere,"
said Jean Starr, newly elected president
of the Lincoln chapter of NOW. "We
can't afford to be identified as a single
issue group; we have to be politically
smart."
The refusal 6f the national convention
delegates to take a hard-line stand on
lesbian concerns is hardly surprising;
lesbianism always has been a touchy
issue within the women's movement,
especially for NOW.
When NOW was formed in October
of 1966, its purpose was to combat sexual
discrimination and bring all women into
full participation in the mainstream of
American society. But despite its praise
worthy statement of purpose, NOW
has an unmistakable upper middle-class
bias. This is probably because of the
nature of the group that founded NOW,
and is one of the reasons it has been
often criticized as not being truly re
presentative of the majority of Ameri
can women.
! The organization still suffers from the
elitist image - problem that started back
in the early 1960s "with Betty Friedan's
infamous remark about the lesbian issue
as a "lavender herring." Friedan, along
with other well-meaning but easily ex
citable heterosexuals, thought lesbianism
would hurt the women's movement. In
deed, the threat of being called a man
hating "women's libber" was enough to
keep many "straights" from joining NOW
in the early years.
But by September of 1971, during
the fifth annual NOW conference in Los
Angeles, the delegation came out with
a resolution that was miles, from its origi
nal position on the threat of the Lavender
Menace. It read:
"Afraid of alienating public support,
we have often treated lesbians as the step
sisters of the movement, allowed to work
with us, but then expected, to hide in
the upstairs closet when company comes.
Lesbians are now telling us that this
attitude is no longer acceptable. Asking
women to disguise their identities so
they will not 'embarrass' the group is an
intolerable, form of oppression, like asking
black women to join us in white face."
Continued pn Page 5
A& Letters
Article objectionable
We, the interns and volunteers at the
VictimWitness Unit, object to the article
in the Oct. 8 issue of the Daily Nebraskan
written by Eric Peterson titled "Victim,
Witnesses get support."
First, Shirley Kuhle was not inter
viewed. She sent two articles about the
VictimWitness Unit and its goals to the
newspaper. Secondly, things were taken
out of context. At no time has Kuhle
stated that the "unit intervenes in the
self-destructive behavior pattern of vic
tims." Also, neither she nor the article
said that "the victim may become sus
picious and mistakenly recognize inno
cent people as the criminal."
These statements also blame the vic
tims, something Kuhle and all of us at
the VictimWitness Unit do not knowingly
do. Most people we deal with are con
cerned citizens who have to be able to
work through their confusion, anger
and resentment. The next time Peterson
writes an article, we sincerely hope he
really interviews the people involved, not
just makes up an interview out of articles
that he reads.
Peggy Croghan and 10 others
Concert memorable
Having attended the magnificent Diana
Ross concert Friday, I would like to
give a word of thanks to the University
Program Counci. UPC deserves a standing
ovation tor bringing one ot the toremost
artists in the world of pop music to our
campus.
Ross spirited performance was a
definite example of all the categories
of pop music.
I am grateful for having had the op
portunity to spend "an evening with
Diana Ross." It was an experience I will
never forget. , .
Eddie Burton
sophomore, marketing
Why believe
the worst
about Israel?
Let us return to the horrors of Sabra
and Shatila, the two Palestinian refugee
camps in Lebanon where innocents were
murdered. And regarding those horrors,
for which the Israelis astoundingly are
being blamed, let us raise two forbidden
topics.
The first has to do with the perpe-
( C Ross
fcsj Mackenzie
members of the Christian Phalange to
enter the camps for the purpose of
rounding up lingering Palestinian terro
rists. Survivors say the camp pogroms
were carried out by individuals who
wore uniforms of several Christian sects.
Perhaps they were.
Perhaps they were not. Perhaps, rather,
the massacres were carried out by indivi
duals masquerading as members of the
Christian Phalange, yet who in reality
were not Phalangists at all. Or perhaps
they were indeed Phalangists yet working
in the service of someone else. Neither
is an impossibility.
Those who had the most to gain geo
politically by machine-gunning women and
children in Sabra and Shatila were those
who sought to discredit Israel. Surely
it is not inconceivable that agents of the
Palestine Liberation Organization or the
Kremlin would undertake such killings if
they thought they could get away with
them. u. ' - -
The second forbidden topic is anti
Semitism, One hears frequent admonitiions these
days against racism as it relates to blacks,
but rarely as it relates to Jews. Yet the
virulence of the hostility to ' Israel in
Lebanon, particularly in the aftermath
of Sabra and Shatila, suggests that his
toric venality toward Jewishness persists
unabated in this supposedly enlightened
time - notably in the most sophisticated
quarters.
As The New Republic has noted about
the parceling of guilt for the Lebanese
killings, "There is a double standard
here, to be sure: When Israel was not
involved, comparable events in Lebanon
were not even reported."
As Norman Podhoretz has noted,
"A good deal of anti-Semitism, embodied
in the application of a double standard
to the behavior of Jews (has) surfaced
in the attacks on Israel's conduct in Le
banon. The same double standard is at
work (regarding blame for Sabra and
Shatila) as well . . . When Christians mur
dered Moslems for having murdered
Christians, the world immediately began
denouncing the Jews who were, at the
very worst, indirectly involved."
How eager we are to believe the worst
about Israel. The Soviets are gassing
Afghans and using slave labor on the
Siberian pipeline to Europe, but the
world needs "more proof." Yet for merely
venturing into Lebanon against the PLO,
The New York Times and The Washington
Post have likened Israel to the Nazis.
For a sin he did not commit,
Sabra and Shatila have made it res
pectable to say outrageous things about
Israel - to parade a latent animus toward
Jews no less morally debilitating than a
hatred of blacks. In his September Com
mentary magazine piece, Podhoretz put
it strongly but accurately when he con
cluded: "I charge here that the anti-Semitic
attacks on Israel which have erupted . . .
are a cover for a loss of American nerve.
They are a cover for acquiescene in terro
rism. They are a cover for the appease
ment of totalitarianism. And I accuse
all those who have joined in these attacks
not merely of anti-Scmitisrrj but of the
broader sin of faithlessness to the interests
of the United States and indeed to the
values of Western civilization as a whole."
.183, Tribune C, Syndieatt, Ine.
