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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 23, 1985)
Monday, September 23, 1935 Pago 4 Daily Nebraskan li O h New study area justified, but students deserve voice Ithough the UNL athletic department went through the proper channels in setting up the women ath lete's study area in Smith Residence Hall, the Resi dence Hall Association, backed by ASUN, is justified in wanting to be consulted the next time a similar decision is made. The decision to build the study area in Smith Hall took place near the beginning of August before any RHA representatives were on campus, said Douglas Zatechka, director of the Office of University Housing. At that time, Zatechka said the athletic department went through "the only proper channels" they could have. Zatechka said that during the summer, representatives of the athletic department and Chancellor Martin Massengale asked him if he knew of any space in the residence halls that would make a good place for the study area. He said the Smith Hall loungepiano practice area was selected for three reasons: o Cost of renovating the Smith Hall area was the least. Many women athletes. live in Smith Hall. Smith Hall is the closest to the women's practice fields. Zatechka also said the Smith Hall lounge did not appear to be used a lot although none of the lounges he has toured have ever been full. Because RHA was not on campus when the housing office decided to build the two-room study area, the residence hall group is not justified in criticizing the procedure used for the Smith Hall project. By consulting Zatechka, the athletic department did all it could and did not railroad the project through without taking the proper channels. However, residence hall students have the right to be con cerned about and involved with decisions regrading the build ings where they live. To ensure this right, RHA and ASUN have urged the housing office to consult hall residents and hall governments before making similar decisions. Smith Hall residents deserve a study area just as much as the women athletes, and RHA and ASUN should be commended for making this clear. Through the effort of the student governments and Smith Hall president Sydney Warner, the construction of a new study area for Smith Hall residents is being planned. Editorial policy Unsigned editorials represent official policy of the fall 1985 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its members are Vicki Ruhga, editor in chief; Jonathan Taylor, editorial page editor; Ad Hudler, news editor; Suzanne Teten, campus editor and Lauri Hopple, copy desk chief. Editorials do not necessarily reflect the views of the university, its employees, the students or the NU Board of Regents. The Daily Nebraskan's publishers are the regents, who established the UNL Publications Board to supervise the daily production of the paper. The Daily Nebraskan 34 Nebraska Union 14C0 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448 EDITOR NEWS EDITOR CAMPUS EDITOR ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR WIRE EDITOR - COPY DESK CHIEFS SPORTS EDITOR ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR PHOTO CHIEF ASSISTANT PHOTO CHIEF NIGHT NEWS EDITOR ASSOCIATE NIGHT NEWS EDITORS ART DIRECTOR ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR GENERAL MANAGER PRODUCTION MANAGER ASSISTANT PRODUCTION MANAGER ADVERTISING MANAGER ASSISTANT ADVERTISING MANAGER CIRCULATION MANAGER PUBLICATIONS BOARD CHAIRPERSON PROFESSIONAL ADVISER Vicki Ruhga, 472-1766 Ad Hudler Suzanne Teten Kathleen Green Jonathan Taylor Michiela Thuman Lauri Hopple Chris Welsch BobAsmussen Bill Allen David Creamer Mark Davis Gene Gentrup Richard Wright Michelle Kubik Kurt Eberhardt Phil Tsai Daniel Shattll Katherlne Policky Barb Branda Sandi Stuewe Mary Hupf Brian Hoglund Joe Thomsen Don Walton, 473-7301 The Daily Nebraskan (USPS 144-080) is published by the UNL Publica tions Board Monday through Friday in the fall and spring semesters and Tuesdays and Fridays in the summer sessions, except during vacations. Readers are encouraged to submit story ideas and comments to .the Daily Nebraskan by phoning 472-1763 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m; Wortday .through Friday. The public also has access to the Publications Board, for information, contact Joe Thomsen. Subscription price is $35 for one year. Postmaster: Send address changes to the Daily Nebraskan, Nebraska Union 34, 1400 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448.-Second-class postage paid at Lincoln, NE 68510. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1S35 DAILY NEBRASKAN ;. ... Wtl T)M? TUE HOUNDS HTJDME TIME POMPOUS HORSEBVCKl I6ErS0TKEP Of 1W5ECMZY HUNTS' iwm ( V&l P x V ' .:' I I. ..n i A It .f. V . ' -v If " 111 t I ;.ZUL - t'r i-v, , irh J V.J) Vi Wean. It Ermer oiql suippo Sunday we listened to this coun try's most popular entertainers wail for aid in this case, Farm Aid. Nebraskans hear the songs and hope for something to happen,because the tune they've been listening to is a dirge. The crumbling farm economy is in ample evidence around us: A record low NU budget increase, low state budget and now another request for cuts. Gov. Bob Kerrey is asking state agencies, including NU, to voluntarily trim an extra 1.5 percent from their budgets. The farmers, say FarmAid organiz ers, are not asking for a handout, they're just asking for time. They've been asking for time since Roosevelt's New Deal. Obviously, our farm program has outlived its useful ness; the billions of dollars our govem . ment has poured into agriculture has not prevented the closings of thousands of small farms, and in some cases, those dollars have actually made the problem worse. The Minneapolis Star and Tribune conducted an in-depth, six-month re search project on the farm economy this summer. Some of the facts gathered in the study, called "Propping up the Farm," merit attention. Price supports are 30 times more expensive this year than they were in Roosevelt's time, including discount for inflation. Congress spent record amounts on farm aid in the 1980s. Yet in the past five years, about 100,000 farms went under. O Four million farms have col lapsed since 1945 despite price sup ports that rose faster than farm income. There are about the same acres in farms today as there were in the 1930s. In the late 1970s, taxpayers chip ped in 14 cents for every dollar of farm profits. Thaf contribution is now 43 cents per dollar. In proportion to their contribu tion to the public welfare, farmers receive more federal help than any other sector of the economy. Although a complete cutoff of farm supports would be damaging to many farmers, most don't depend on the land completely for income. Chris Welsch Only about one in eight farm fami lies makes most of its money on farm ing. The ones who do are the biggest. The top producers, one of every 100 farmers, produce almost one-third of the crops. On the other hand, one of every three farms sells less than $5,000 worth of crops. These farms are con sistent losers, which have to be sup ported by outside income. Those in between, the majority, have incomes below the national average. Federal money that goes into research' and development has actually hurt farmers in some ways. Today's farmer can grow several times the number of bushels on the same land which has added to this nation's surplus food and low prices. Americans eat only 61 per cent of what our farmers produce, the Star and Tribune reports. The rest is stockpiled or exported.' Even price supports cause problems. By artificially hiking prices, many farm ers cannot compete on the interna tional market. Their prices are too high. Where do we turn now, $130 billion after the New Deal? Eliminating price supports and other programs would hasten the demise of the small farm, collapse many small banks and towns and cause a great deal of suffering. But leaving them in place is a $30 billion annual drain on the economy, which is already burdened with a huge deficit. Market forces will crush the small farmer out of existence eventually. It takes big land, big machinery and big money to run a successful farm. That is a tragedy. America was built by small farmers small farms are our roots. At one time, small farmers were con servators of the land, saving it for gen erations of children. Now many have to rape the land in order to survive. Congress should hear the FarmAid song and respond by slowly, but surely, weaning farmers off support. Subsidies and loans should be targeted toward the smallest farmers who have a chance to make it. Programs should not, as they do now, benefit the biggest farmers as well as the smallest. Eventually, the open market will prevail. It's the system we founded this country on and generally it works to make an efficient economy. For our farm economy to work, there must be fewer farmers producing less food. Money not used for farm supports should be used to re-educate and relo cate farmers. Programs should be insti tuted to prevent abuse of the land by the corporate and large farms that will be on it. Political realities make such sug gestions pipe dreams wasted war bling. The farm lobby is strong, farm state Congressmen are strong, the aid will continue and farms will continue to fail. Sunday's warbling in Champagne, 111., will earn about $50 million to ease the plight of the farmer. That's almost enough money to pay the interest on U.S. fanners $212 billion collective debt for one day. '60s radical lives quiet life of Islam From the sun-dappled park comes the background rhythm of urban life, the slap-slap-slap of basket balls on blacktop. Across the street, in a small convenience store, and in pro found peace of mind, sits the proprie tor, selling eggs and reading the Koran. He is Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. He is 41. He used to be H. Rap Brown. But that was long ago and, in a sense, in another country. It has been a winding and ascending path from his boyhood in Baton Rouge, La., to Atlanta's west end, The hyperkinetic human torch of urban unrest, circa 1967, is, in 1895, enveloped in a strange serenity in a city known for its hum of energy. The man who was the hammer of America, or at least of Cambridge, Md., has become a merchant, but with this distinction: He is, at last, really radical. That radicalism was a short candle. It was rhetorical radicalism, elicited from young people by older flatterers and amplified by the media 18 years ago. Today, and for the long haul, Jamil is in inner emigration, out of his coun try and into Islam. n (i3vt George La win He burst upon the nation in the 1960s, when the social air was com posed of (in the words of a Rex Stout character) "oxygen, nitrogen and odi um He succeeded StokelyCarmichael as head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which soon changed the second word to "National. He said the sorts of things that then passed for trenchancy: "If you giveme a gun I just might shoot Lady Bird." The only lasting legacy of his brief blast of prominence is an aphorism: "Violence is as American as cherry pie." The 1960s were God's gift to conser vatism, a decade dominated, not numer ically byt culturally, by overreachers. Those years wer noisy with the voices oi fundamentally frivolous people feign ing seriousness, people convinced that sentiment is the measure of virtue, that rhetoric is the measure . of sentiment and that morality is a state of mind: l feel, there fore I am. This radicalism helped to produce two significant ei fects: the "backlash", candidacy oi George Wallace and the presidency oi Please see WILL on 5