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Monday, October 25, 1982
Daily Nebraskan
ditoria
Hoch as regent:
a welcome change
Perhaps the best reason to elect Nancy Hoch to the NU
Board of Regents is to rid it of Robert Prokop, the incum
bent candidate.
Prokop, running for his third six-year term for the 4th
District seat, has proved himself one of the board's most
anti-student members, consistently dismissing student
concerns. He has more than once abused his power as
regent and generally is more worried about keeping taxes
down in his district than building a strong state university.
Which is not to say that Nancy Hoch of Nebraska City
cannot stand on her own merits. Her experience on
university boards, her support of higher faculty salaries
and her positive attitude toward NU should earn her a
place on the board. Coupled with Prokop's lamentable
record during his two terms, she. should be a shoo-in.
Selected facts from the recent , past illustrate why
Prokop, the forensic pathologist from Wilbur, should be
defeated. They are:
- charging the university for calls that seem to be more
personal than regent-related. Prokop has inadequately
defended his calls to his parents in Wilbur, to an aunt in
Los Angeles and to various coaches, umpires and league
officials connected with semi-pro baseball. Charging NU
for the calls, an action revealed in late September of this:
year by the Omaha World-Herald, was thoughtless abuse,
of power.
- racking up more than $5,000 worth of expenses
in 1981 . Prokop said then that as board chairman, he had
to travel more. That never explained why the next highest
expense account totaled only $1,954.53, and the lowest
expense account showed a mere $255.49.
Prokop's constant defense that he is the board's most
active regent does not explain away the large discrepancy
between his expenses and those of others.
- fighting a policy that would have allowed students
to get a refund for their Vund A student fees. (It was
passed anyway.) He has consistently opposed collection of
student fees - not because he is worried about overcharg
ing students, but because he doesn't think the Daily Ne
braskan and ASUN, both Fund A fee users, should receive
student fees.
- refusing to appoint a student regent to the executive
committee of the board. Back in February of 1981, when
Renee Wessels, then ASUN president, requested a student
regent be added to the committee, Prokop opposed it,
saying student regents lacked respect for other board
members and leaked embarrassing information to the
press.
In an Oct. 21, 1982 article, Prokop continued in that
vein. He said he is opposed to having student regents
altogether, because they are not elected from districts as
other board members are.
- dabbling in plagiarism. Long forgotten, but still
pertinent, is Regent Prokop's 1972 plagiarism. He violated
his professional ethics when he wrote an article, printed in
the Douglas County Gazette, discussing the evils of homo
sexuality. The article was a near word-for-word copy of
excerpts" from "Homosexuality, Disease or Way of Life"
by Edmund Bergler.
- lack of accessibility. Prokop is the most difficult
board member for the press to reach. He lists no home
telephone number in the Centrex directory. He returns
messages, left at the NU Medical Center several days late.
As an elected official, Prokop's unwillingness to cooper
ate with the student press is appalling.
In the Daily Nebraskan's most recent article about
Prokop, published last week, he emphasized the need to
hold down tax increases in the 4th District.
While a regent has a responsibility to the people of
his district, he or she first and foremost has the obligation
to make the university strong. Yet Prokop's only
comment on low faculty salaries at NU was: "In order to
increase salaries, you would also have to support a tax
increase. Is she (Hoch) willing to go out into the district
and say we need a tax increase?"
Right now, Nancy Hoch is an untested commodity.
We know her university experience includes serving on the
President's Advisory Council, the Alumni Association
Board of Directors, the Wick Alumni Center Committee
and the University Health Center Board of Councilcrs.
We also know that she has obtained the formal support
of the other five candidates in the primary elections and
that she has been campaigning heavily.
We know, too, that' she has said she will listen to
students, something Prokop has not been famous for.
And although she does not advocate allowing student
regents to vote on board matters, she has said that the
regents "should hear their opinions."
Hoch wtauld provide a refreshing and informed voice
on this university's governing board. The Daily Nebraskan
endorses her wholeheartedly and asks all 4th District
voters to consider Robert Prokop's record when they
mark their balloti Nov. 2.
Ban of Solidarity war inevit
able
It had to be, the banning of Solidarity. It had to be,
not in the sense that it is good, but in the sense that it
was inevitable. Solidarity mounted the most serious (and
potentially most damaging) threat to communism ever
experienced in the Soviet block, and had to be rubbed
out.
Poland is different. There have been other challenges
to Soviet hegemony - Hungary 'and Czechoslovakia are
Ross Mackenzie
the most obvious examples - but neither country ap
proaches Poland's centrality. It is the Kremlin's biggest
East European province. Its population is twice Czecho
slovakia's and three times Hungary's. That population is
massively Christian (95 percent Catholic) and devoutly
anti-Soviet.
What's more, because of the accident of its geo
graphy - because of its vital strategic placement - Poland
has suffered hugely for centuries. It has been divided by
Prussians, Germans and Russians. As the Pope, a Pole,
has noted, "For us, the word "motherland' has a meaning,
both for the mind and for the heart, such as the other
nations of Europe and the world appear not to know,
especially those nations that have not experienced, as
ours has, historical wrongs, injustices and' menaces."
Today, Poland is the very nexus of the Soviets' western
front.
As Poland is different, so Solidarity fashioned an
assault against communism profoundly different from
those that went before. Founded two years ago, it was -is
- a union with 10 million members, nearly one-third
of Poland's entire population. As such, it was a dagger
poised at the heart of Marxism-Leninism: notably at the
tenet postulating the Communist Party as the sole repre
sentative of the working class.
Solidarity said, in effect, "No. We speak for the
workers. In their name, we deplore and oppose the
official policies of atheism, and of public ownership of
the land, and of terror as the government's crucial instru
ment." Solidarity's founder Lech Walesa, made clear the
intention of Solidarity in some of the things he said -for
instance: "I want democracy" and "Nobody has;
the right to beat anyone up." It was an intention the
Kremlin understood very well, even if much of the West
did not. That is why the Kremlin ordered that Solidarity
be smashed.
The campaign to do so took increasingly, vicious
form - first in the unproductive efforts of Stanislaw
Kania's regime, then in the threat of Soviet invasion;
then in the replacement of Kania by the more knuckle
crunching Wojciech Jaruzelski; then in Jaruzelski's Dec.
13 declaration of martial law and the jailing of many
Solidarity members, then - on Friday - in the banning
of Solidarity altogether.
If the West - in its abiding failure to face the reality
of communism - generally has underappreciated what
Solidarity has been doing, President Ronald Reagan has
appreciated it in full. In support of Solidarity, he has
fought fang and talon against construction of the Soviets'
Yamal natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Western
Europe. In support of Solidarity, he should have halted
all trade with the Soviet bloc, including the sale of Ameri
can grain.
Continued on Page 5
Backlash unfair to working mothers
My best friend had a baby a couple of weeks ago, a
little boy. He's cut and cuddly and -makes funny gurgling
noises.
Trish was lucky. She had a fairly easy delivery and her
oaoy is nanasome ana nealthy. She has a -supportive
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Julia O'Gara
husband and an assortment of friends and relatives close
by, willing to help out when needed. She also has her job
waiting for her when she finishes a three-month leave of
absence.
There's nothing so remarkable about all this except
that my friend is 29 and this is her first baby. Trish and I
were children of the '60s, the last of the "baby boom"
generation. According to the National Center for Health
Statistics, a woman today might be expected to have 1.8
children during her childbearing years as compared with
the 3.6 children a woman might have had 20 years ago.
My friend is among a group of women which has made
a conscious decision to delay having children until they
are in-thcir late 20s and early 30s. There are a number of
reasons why women would choose to wait until they are a
little older to have children, not the least of which is
economic stability.
A generation ago, the so-called "traditional" family
consisted of one father who worked outside the home,
one mother who didn't, and three or four children.
Actually, there was a very large number of working
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home to supplement the family income. For these
women, as for most women today, working was a matter
of keeping the family solvent.
The difference now might be that a larger number of
young women are not only attending college and receiving
degrees (as did many in their mother's generation), but are
actually pursuing careers in their chosen fields.
When Betty Friedan interviewed some of her fellow
Smith College graduates from the class of 1942 for her
seminal work "The Feminine Mystique," she found that
nearly all those former liberal arts majors had abandoned
their career plans in favor of homemaking. Regardless of
V 5du,cational background, the married college graduate
of the '50s and '60s was likely to identify her occupation
are "housewife."
Back then, the rationale was to get married and raise a
t? y st' then Pursue a carcer after children were
older. But the women who followed that course found
that their education did them little good unless they
entered the job market soon after graduation and built up
some experience in their fields. Entering a field of work
no experience and with a diploma that is 10 years
old is difficult at best.
Now, however, the .trend seems to be reversed. Many
women, like my friend, are choosing to establish their
careers first and start families later. The types of careers,
too, are changing with more women entering such non
traditional fields as engineering and architecture.
Continued on Page 5
