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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 1985)
Wednesday, October 30, 1985 Page 4 Daily Nebraskan 1 1 ft u NU support drive needs input inrom tiidente9 faculty T7 SUPPORT NTT." ASUN and the UNL Alumni Association have sounded a battle cry against Gov. Bob Kerrey's proposed $5 million NU budget cut. In a campaign against the cuts, the alumni association is distributing "I support NU" bumper sickers. ASUN senators also tried to draw support by passing out smaller "I support NU" stickers at Saturday's football game against Colorado. Public awareness and support will solve NU's budget crisis, and ASUN and the alumni are doing their part. But they can't win the battle alone. Students, parents, faculty members and other alumni must voice their university support to friends, relatives and, most importantly, state legislators. "I support NU" is a call to action. If students and faculty sit idly by, relying on the "big names" at the university our administrators and representatives to express the concerns )f the entire campus, NU will be poorly represented at the statehouse. No matter how many times NU President Ronald Roskens denounces the reductions at budget committee hearings, state legislators won't help NU unless more students and faculty show their own concern. ' State senators noticed the lack of input from UNL students, said Kelly Kuchta, chairman of the UNL Government Liaison Committee. UNO and Wayne State have sent students to the state Capitol to react to the recommended budget cuts, Kuchta said. But few UNL students have talked to legislators. ' The key to saving the university from irreversable damage is communication between students, faculty and legislators. People who don't have time to visit the Capitol should call or write their senators. Pester them. Keep reminding them of the university's plight. Face to face conversations with senators are the most effec tive, Kuchta said. Students can talk to legislators anytime, whether they are in their offices or on the floor of the Legislature. The ASUN Office, 1 15 Nebraska Union, can provide senators' phone and office numbers, as well as background on the proposed budget cuts. Verbal communication is important, but even students wearing "Go Big Red" sweatshirts who mill around the Capitol will show their support for NU. The time for passive complaining is over. Aggressive action, such as rallies, marches or simple one-on-one visits with sena tors will determine the future of the university. The Daily Nebraskan 34 Nebraska Union 1400 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 WEATHER 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 VicWRuhga, 472-1766 Ad Hudler Suzanne Teten Kathleen Green Jonathan Taylor MIchMa Thuman Laurt Hopple Chris Welsch Bob Asmussen Bill Allen Barb Branda David Creamer Mark Davis Gene Genirup Richard Wright Michelle Kublk Kurt Eberhardt Phil Tsal Daniel Shattil 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. Monday 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. 68588-0443. Second-class postage paid at Lincoln, NE 68510. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1985 DAILY NEBRASKAN w y ft if. I t V I WIJ STa tWtOCK6R.,80 VOBFOR WHI7FCA6 (VTH CHOCOtMB CAKEANP 80 FOR fflQC0tAfgCfli6W7HCAKE, Several evenings ago I was privy to something of a bull session among a group of high school students. I wasn't really eavesdropping it was simply one of those animated conversa tions that no one in the general area can avoid overhearing. Curiously enough, the topic of this bull session was church and church attendance or rather the lack thereof. Us Jim Rogers As the typical conversation in such a rhetorical arena is wont to go, the ses sion began with one of the students exclaiming how pitiable it was that her mother was forcing her to go to church the next morning. Another girl then chimed in about how she just never went to church. Each succeeding dis cussant attempted to express a slightly greater disdain toward church. The conversation naturally picked up a life of its own and began growing in vitriolicity. Finally, one young woman gushed with typical high school exub erance, "I really just hate church." Well, the conversation continued for a short time until some other event of interest broke up the group. But the image of the young woman exclaiming with such casual glee, "I really just hate church," became a source for con tinued meditation on my part. Now, some fashion I can understand the girl's sentiment. She felt her church was boring and irrelevant, and, being caught up in the emotion, she perhaps overstated her case. But on the other hand, irrespective of how much I can emphasize with the young woman's perspective, the seem ing frivolity with which she proclaimed her loathing for a local manifestation of the body of Jesus Christ her purely unreflective blasphemy is a senti ment that I simply cannot fathom and which is profoundly grieving. Yet I believe that this young woman expressed a sentiment consistent with the general American attitude toward worship: Namely, worship exists to serve us, and, absent a totally success ful fulfillment of that goal, it is to be discarded along with hula hoops, troll dolls and other unfashionably outdated toys. Richard Quebedeaux rightfully ob serves in his recent book "By What Authority" that "contemporary religion in America is. . . marked by a lack of deep and fulfilling personal relation ships an absence that provides yet more evidence of its superficiality. This deficiency is the direct consequence of popular religion's de facto self-cen-teredness that maximizes self-awareness and self-development and minim izes self-sacrifice for others. Modern American religion, very simply, doesn't care about doing anything for God. It only wants to use him." Similarly, a recent Gallup report entitled "Religion in America: 50 years," confirms the notion that most Americans have a "self-centered kind of faith," one in which more people worship and pray because "it makes me feel good" than because it ex presses a "need for repentance or the need to do God's will regardless of the cost." This self-centered posture toward Christian communion has caused num berless more honest fellows to cast a somewhat jaundiced glance in the direction of the church, believing it to be full of hypocrites and that glance is not necessarily undeserved. Nonetheless, I think that the young woman's expressed attitude toward church is both a cause and an effect of religious superficiality. She was the hypocrite, I believe, for being content only to flippantly loathe the church (while affirming some sort of belief in God, perhaps even considering herself a Christian) because it didn't satisfy her "needs," and all the while never first venturing to express the mercy of Christ in service to His body unde serving though it may be for such a blessing. But then, that is the gospel after all, isn't it? All in all, however, the time for such casual hatred of the church is ending, and this young woman along with our society as a whole must honestly face up to the consequences of a cul ture attempting to live without Christ. Sober evaluation, rather than flip pant dismissal, then is to be called for because, as Italian Christian social critic Romano Guardini accurately argued, "As the benefits of Revelation disappear even more from the coming world, man will truly learn what it means to be cut off from Revelation." As a result of the emerging self conscious unbelief, the unbeliever, wrote Guardini, "will cease to reap benefit from the values and forces developed by the very Revelation he denies. He must learn to exist honestly without Christ and without the God revealed through Him. . . Nietzsche has already warned us that the non Christian of the modern world had no realization of what it truly meant to be without Christ. The last decades have suggested what life without Christ really is. The last decades were only the beginning." Rogers Is a UNL graduate student in economics and a law student. Bookie operates on fellow worker A few weeks ago, something really scary happened to Tom, who lives in a sleepy little Illinois town. He was flat on his back in a hospital room. His belly was aching, because the doctors had made some extensive repairs of his plumbing. He was groggy from the pain-tf&lers and the stress of the surgery, so he kept dropping off to sleep. When he opened his eyes, he saw a man standing at the foot of his bed. At first he wasn't sure who it was. Then his eyes focused. And Tom groaned. The visitor was a bookie and loan shark. And Tom owed him money. It's an old story. Tom works in a large factory in Sandwich, 111., and lives in a nearby farm town of about 1,200. He happened to discover that one of his co-workers, a $5-an-hour forklift opera tor, was also a bookie. So Tom bet on a baseball game. Then he made a few more bets. And he was in for a couple of hundred. Hoping to get even, he bet again and again. 0 " . ii f- j Mike Royko It didn't take ton Inner hofnro Tm was on the hook for $1,200. For a small town factory worker with a wife and a couple of kids to support, that's a serious debt. Tom asked for time to pay. The bookie said his time was up. The bookie told Tom that it would be unwise for him to welsh. He said he worked for people "up north," meaning Chicago, and they were unforgiving. While Tom was pondering his pre dicament, he got intestinal pains, the doctors found problems, and they operated. Which takes us to Tom and his vis itor in the hospital room. As Tom des cribed the conversation: "He asked me how I was. I told him not too good. Then he told me he had to have the money. "I told him I was very sick and I couldn't pay him right now." "He told me he was very sorry about me being sick. But he said that busi ness is business and if I didn't pay, they would reopen my incision." And he got even more scared when one of the bookie's colleagues phoned the hospital room the next day and Please see ROYKO on 5