Thursday, November 14, 1985
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
W1UJAM
TUE REFRIGERATOR
PERRY
- Run. I
leave NU cut
1 2 TOercent
J-L
p
he "power of the purse" that is, the power to decide
1
the amount of money NU will lose from this year's
budget passed from the Legislature to Gov. Bob
Kerrey on Wednesday.
By a 43-4 vote, senators sent Kerrey a budget reduc
tion bill that cuts about $17 million from the state's 1985-86
budget. If Kerrey signs the bill, NU will lose 2 percent, or $3.4
million, of the money it gets from the state tax dollars money
the NU Board of Regents was counting on when it made its
spending decisions for this school year.
When Kerrey gave senators his list of budget cuts last
month, he recommended that the Legislature reduce NU's
state support by 3 percent. But thanks to a well-organized
lobbying effort by NU's students, faculty members and admin
istrators, senators decided that a 2 percent cut was as much as
the university could stand without suffering permanent
damage.
"Of all the budget cuts proposed," Lincoln Sen. Don Wesely
said last week, "the university was the most strenuously
opposed to. I think that made the difference."
All those who supported NU during the budget battle should
be congratulated for helping the university.
But the game is not over.
Under Nebraska law, Kerrey can veto specific parts of
budget bills without rejecting the entire bill. With this "line
item veto" authority, Kerrey cannot lessen the severity of NU's
budget cut. But he has the power to increase the cut to the 3
percent he originally proposed or to whatever amount he
deems appropriate. To reverse the veto, 30 of the Legislature's
49 senators would have to vote for an override.
Before the 2 percent cut for NU was approved last week,
Neligh Sen. John DeCamp said Kerrey told him he would use
his line-item veto to return the cut to 3 percent. At his news
conference the next day, Kerrey denied he had made such a
threat, but said NU officials "foolishly came down here to argue
for an additional 1 percent."
We strongly urge the governor to abide by the wishes of the
people, the Legislature, students and faculty members and
leave NU's budget cut at 2 percent. The money senators gave
back to NU won't make the ultimate difference between qual
ity and mediocrity, but it will help preserve educational oppor
tunity for all Nebraskans.
Kerre,. has promised to work for such opportunity. Now he
can prove his sincerity.
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STAR WARS?
VWO'S WORRIED
fcBOUT STAR WARS?!
WHAT'S TUE UNITED
STATES GOING TO DO
WI1UW?
BN esmiigM in act
I wanted to be fair, but noooooooo!
OK, OK, so ASUN found us out.
This fine, upstanding body of
junior legislators recently passed
a resolution urging the UNL Publica
tions Board to urge the Daily Nebras
kan to print only unbiased, fair and
accurate articles and to help promote
school unity.
Of course, what they really meant
was the DN should be more positive
toward ASUN and the Greek system,
since ASUN is just an extension of the
Greek system.
Bill
Allen
Well gosh darn it all, it looks like
we've been caught. For the last several
years the DN staff has been at the fore
front of the campus anti-Greek move
ment, except me, who has always done
my best to defend those boys and girls
when I could.
For instance, this year when the fra
ternity raided the sorority house on
another campus, for reasons I des
cribed in a previous unbiased article, I
was the first one to run over to News
Editor Adrian Hudler and say "Ad,
we've gotta report this in a positive way
so as to promote school unity."
Those were my very words.
But, as the late John Belushi would
say, noooooooo!
Ad said to me, "Bill, we've got to
report the facts and get both sides of
the story so people will be able to make
their own conclusions about what
happened."
Well, as you can imagine, I was so
put out by such nonsense that I had to
write that previous article to clear
things up for the general readers who
couldn't make their own conclusions.
Ad has been hung up about this
accuracy thing all semester. Why every
little fund-raiser the Greeks have he
wants a story on it, sometimes with
pictures that present it in such a posi
tive light it could nearly make you
puke.
And when those two Greeks won the
annual Greek popularity contest (other
wise known as Homecoming) they both
got their picture in the paper and in a
positive way too, promoting school
unity to all get out. Now, I suggested
waiting for her to pick her nose or for
him to pinch her rear and then snap the
picture, but nooooo!
And a few years back when that fra
ternity got in trouble for alleged drug
activity I was the first one to run over to
the news desk and say, "Hey, we gotta
present this in a positive way so as to
promote school unity."
But noooooooo! Again they insisted
on covering the whole thing as accu
rately as possible.
Gosh darn it all.
I personally thinft the DN should
change its obviously biased policy
toward the Greek system by not report
ing Greek events at all.
Furthermore, I think we should pass
a scorching resolution to do away with
the UNL Greek system in its entirety,
then there would be nothing good or
bad to report, biased or unbiased. I
know I would sleep a lot better at
night.
And without the fine, upstanding,
well-dressed Greeks there would be no
more ASUN and without ASUN I can't
see any possible reason for this univer
sity to be here at all.
By resolving away the Greeks, we
could put an end to this university fas
ter than the state legislature.
But what to do with so many fine,
upstanding, well-dressed humanitarian
Greeks? We can't just send them home
or the ghost of little Bo Peep would be
running around weeping, "Where oh
where have my little Greeks gone?"
I say lets herd them all over to the
site of the proposed Lied Center for the
Performing Arts and pass a resolution
banishing the site and all the Greeks to
South Africa where they would fit right
in.
Of course, we'd have to send over a
few clothing stores, hair salons and car
dealerships, too, so they would feel
more at home.
The basic idea, of course, is to end
all this biased reporting against the
GreekASUN system.
I'm certainly tired of people saying
the DN has anything against those fine,
upstanding campus leaders. I know I
don't, and everyone else knows it too.
South Africa is the place for them,
and back here all that would be left
would be the DN and the football team,
which we could present in a positive
light just like the other Lincoln news
papers. That's all anybody in this state cares
about anyway.
This is after all, Nebraska, home of
the good life where there is no room for
questioning the actions of anyone, any
thing or anyplace. I know I certainly
wouldn't.
Why, what would the forefathers of
this fine country have said if they
thought we were going to take them
seriously when they spouted off such
one-liners as "freedom of the press"
and "equality?"
Sure, that stuff sounded nice on
paper, but did anyone think they meant
it?
Noooooooo!
Allenis asenior English major
and Daily Nebraskan Arts and
Entertainment editor.
Joint communique 'junk food'
Visitors to Moscow say a theme
there is that President Reagan is
a manipulated cipher within his
own government. Some members of his
government probably think so, too, and
hope to prove the point by stuffing
their agenda into any communique
issued jointly by the two sides at the
conclusion of the summit.
George
Will
Such a communique is utterly
optional and obviously unwise. There
was none at the conclusion of the
Gorbachev-Mitterrand summit. Mitter
rand successfully avoided having an
"arms-control summit." He constantly
raised issues of human rights, includ
ing lists of specific cases. This moral
tone and concreteness prevented the
antiseptic and anesthetizing arcana of
arms control from producing numb
ness, that absence of feeling that U.S.
diplomats confuse with "an era of good
feeling."
Mitterrand understands that com
muniques issued jointly by democratic
and totalitarian leaders must be vapid,
to the totalitarians' advantage. Such
communiques are tissues of muzzy
formulations falsely suggesting harmony
and moral symmetry.
No summit is short enough, but all
are short. Divide the time (in Geneva,
two days) in half to allow for meticu
lous translations. Then subtract time
for stilted niceties. Obviously summits
must be primarily ratifying occasions,
unveiling work done elsewhere.
Diplomatic boilerplate often proves
that even the platitudinous can be
injurious. If a joint communique asserts,
contrary to reason and history, that
tensions yield only to dialogue, it triv
ializes this century's great division
between freedom and its armed ene
mies. What is needed is not more dia
logue but less Soviet misbehavior.
Please see WILL on 5
