Friday, September 13, 1985
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Fast-food franchise
would benefit union
j i i - . ,,,
T
he Nebraska Union should bring in a commercial
fast-food restaurant and update the Harvest Room
cafeteria to cut growing losses.
The Nebraska Union food services lost more than
$100,000 in the last three years. Union officials have
compensated for last year's losses by cutting costs and using
some student fees, which usually pay for non-income-producing
activities.
Union officials plan to survey students to find alternatives.
Current plans include remodeling present food services or
leasing union space to a commercial fast-food restaurant.
The most feasible solution would be to remodel the cafete
ria, and also bring in a commercial fast-food competitor.
At Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., the
student center's volume increased $500,000 after a Hardee's
restaurant leased space in the newly remodeled cafeteria last
year, said Bob Brookover, CSU associate director of finance.
Colorado State's union receives 10 percent of Hardee's
annual gross, with a guarantee of $75,000 a year. And if Har
dee's makes $1 million or more in a year, then 13 percent will
go to the union.
Nebraska Union needs a fast-food restaurant, as well as its
merchandising and marketing skills. After all, the booming
fast-food business contributed to the decline of the union food
services.
Nebraska Union officials fear that an outside commercial
restaurant would compete with other union food services.
But since the union would be earning partial profits on the
fast-food franchise's income, the union would not lose money.
If the new franchise failed, the union still would have a
guaranteed income, like the one at CSU.
Competition also would not be a problem because the
fast-food outlet probably would sell hamburgers, pizza or tacos.
An updated Harvest Room could continue to sell meals, and
offer an improved salad bar and better service.
Renovation could save the Harvest Room, which has not
been updated for 17 years. But renovation alone would not
increase Union Square's profits.
Flashy surroundings don't improve the taste of hamburgers,
just as the mirrored walls of the new University Bookstore do
not make textbooks more educational.
Bookstore renovators brought in new products, such as
computers, more food and additional clothing to make the
bookstore more popular. Like the bookstore, the union needs
more variety, and a fast-food restaurant could provide it.
Students' opinions of franchises could be sought in next
semester's survey.
With student input, union officials could select a restaurant
that would make profits for itself, as well as the union.
The Daily Nebraskan
34 Nebraska Union
1400 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448
EDITOR
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ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1S35 DAILY NESRASXAN
50RR , BUT THE WST G6RMAM PRE5P0WI&W
Pornography control needed
The case of Robert E. Hunt Jr., the
convicted kller whose death sen
tence was overturned by the Neb
raska Supreme Court, has received a
lot of attention recently. In April of
1984, Hunt, a Norfolk resident of five
years, was charged with the murder of
Beverly K. Ramspott. On April 12, 1084,
Hunt forced his way into the woman's
mobile home by threatening her at the
door with a BB gun. He picked Rams
pot out because her picture had
appeared in the engagement section of
the Norfolk Daily News.
According to the written opinion of
the court, once he was in her house
Hunt tied her arms and legs with nylon
rope and stuck two pair of women's
underwear in her mouth. He dragged
her into her living room, removed a
nylon stocking from the cassette case
he had brought with him and strangled
her with it. After she had lost con
sciousness, he sexually assaulted her.
Finally, finding a weak pulse, Hunt car
ried her to the bathtub and held her
head under a foot of water until she was
dead.
Later that night the police were
summoned by Hunt's wife. Hunt told
Officer Doug Dekker, "Doug, I killed
her. 1 can see her. She's in the bathtub
and she's dead." Officer Dekker asked
Hunt if he had done anything else to
the victim. Hunt replied, 'Teah, I sex
ually assaulted her after she was dead."
The death sentence was overturned
because, in the words of the majority
opinion, the murder was not "heinous,
atrocious or cruel" enough. The deci
sion is under heavy fire. But I am less
troubled by the reduced sentence than
I am by what precipitated the murder
itself. --
When Hunt's house and car were
searched, police found a number of
"sex-oriented magazines." In fact, dur
ing the time Hunt was sitting in his car
waiting to approach Ramspott's house,
he allegedly was leafing through the
sex magazines he had brought with
him. Hunt told Dekker, "I always see
them girls laid out in the pictures with
their eyes closed and I just had to do it.
I dreamed about it for so long that I just
had to do it."
Colleen
Holloran
According to court records, Hunt
told another officer that prior to mur
dering Ramspott he had admitted to
his wife that he had an urge to kill a
woman and have sex with her after she
was dead. He explained that he had
experienced these urges in the past.
On these other occasions he would
gather up the cassette case, together
with sex magazines and a large kitchen
knife, and go "out looking for a female
to do this with, but on those occasions
could not find one."
It may be unclear as to the First
Amendment rights of pornographers,
but the effect of pornography on women
is far from unclear. Pornography con
dones and promotes violence against
women. Consider Hunt's words: "I always
see them girls laid out in the pictures
with their eyes closed and I just had to
doit."
Most studies conclude one of two
things; either pornography desensitizes
people to violence against women, or it
doesn't. Ask 20 people and you'll get 20
different answers. But now is not the
time for philosophical banter or intel
lectual posturing. Pornography has
long been laced with the blood of inno
cent victims, and it has got to stop.
I am realistic about two things: Por
nography denies simple definition, and
censorship is unconstitutional. Through
out the nation, city ordinances that
attempt to define and suppress porno
graphic materials are regularly over
turned on constitutional grounds. But
just as I am in favor of minority quota
systems reverse discrimination if
you will I am willing to risk a possi
ble First Amendment toe-mashing on
the grounds that we as a society need
to get a handle on pornography, now.
The "gosh, what-will-be-next?" argu
ment doesn't wash with me. Naming
pornography and getting rid of it doesn't
signal the imminent death of the free
press. Call it an emotional response,
but in my book pornography consti
tutes a concrete harm that justifies the
creation of a new exception to the First
Amendment.
Holloran Is a graduate English student.
South African reforms too slow
Hard by the railroad station is the
office of the Black Sash, an
organization founded by white
women to help black South Afri
cans cope with the law in particular,
the so-called pass laws that specify
where blacks can live. In theory,
offenders of the pass laws must go to
jail. In practice, many do.
At this moment, a mountainous black
woman is sitting on a stool before a
desk. Behind the desk is a Black Sash
worker named Beulah Rollnick. In an
attempt to persuade the authorities to
allow the woman to live in the Johan
nesburg area, Rollnick is preparing an
affidavit a document that will be
skeptically read more for what it doesn't
say than for what it does.
"Are you married?" Rollnick asks.
The woman says she was. "Do you have
a boyfriend?" With pride, the woman
says she does. Rollnick has an idea The
woman should marry her boyfriend and
thus qualify for residency by marriage.
The woman frowns. "But he not a single
man," she says.
"Then you must wait five years,"
Rollnick says.
"My God!" the woman exclaims. "By
then I would be dead."
Richard
Cohen
By then, the odious pass laws may
themselves be dead. An influential
businessman here says that even within
the ruling National Party the real ques
tion is not whether to end the pass
laws, but when. In the meantime, they
persist a Kafkaesque labyrinth of
regulations that brings about 25,000
persons annually to Black Sash offices
throughout the country. So complex
are the laws that in the Johannesburg
office only Rollnick and another woman
have mastered them. An American
volunteer says it takes two weeks of
observation before you can even begin
to offer advice to the people who come
to the office.
And the people come. On the day I
visited, they were lined up in the outer
office and occasionally drifted into the
hallways, seemingly confused.
Tip O'Neill once said that all politics
is local. I am writing for Americans, not
South Africans, and my thoughts are of
what President Reagan has said: How
he thinks the system here is being
reformed. It's true that there have been
changes, even in the pass" laws, but
reform is a relative term, especially if it
is glacial in movement and, in many
ways, inconsequential.
For the woman who wants only to
live near Johannesburg and who,
incidentally, is forbidden from living in
the city itself the reform that counts
is hardly on the horizon. The time that
South Africa wants to work out its
problems is being deducted from her
life. She had it about right in her inter
view with Rollnick. By the time true
reform comes, she may be dead.
1985, Washington Post Writers Group
Cohen writes an editorial column
for tha Washington post
