Daily Nebraskan
Tuesday, November 26, 1985
t- C til!
Mentor program
initiates interaction
Page 4
relatively unknown counseling program has the
potential to do. great things at UNL.
Through the University Counseling Center's eight-year-old
Student Development Mentoring-Transcript
Project, students and faculty are -encouraged to inte
ract on a more personal level outside of the classroom. LuAnn
Krager, coordinator of the program and former assistant dean
of students, said the program is primarily aimed toward coun
seling, but students and their "mentors" also work on a "tran
script," recording the students' personal and academic growth.
Despite the program's low profile, it boasts a membership of
90 students and mentors. Yet, because of budget cuts the
program has been shrinking and could be eliminated alto
gether, Krager said.
A program with many benefits to students and faculty like
the mentoring project should be retained and strengthened, if
possible.
One on one meetings with faculty provides a variety of
unique advantages that are unobtainable anywhere else. Pro
fessors are often the best sources on programs and can help
reduce the "culture shock" for freshmen.
Through the transcript portion of the program, students can
set personal, academic and professional goals and seek the
advice of mentors on how to attain them. These "mentoring
transcripts" can be used to supplement academic records
when applying for jobs or graduate schools, Krager said.
The biggest benefit of the program involves both the student
and the mentor. In the impersonal lecture hall situation,
students and professors have limited contact because the
large number of students creates a barrier. With the mentoring
program, students and professors can overcome these barriers
and better understand and explore each other's point of view,
intentions and expectations.
Understandably, the Mentoring program will greatly benefit
the university the more it is put into use. But more publicity
about the program is the key to making it a popular counseling
alternative.
Unless more is done to inform students about the mentoring
program, a unique learning opportunity will be unintentionally
ignored and perhaps, needlessly abandoned.
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Unsigned editorials represent official policy of the fall 1985 Daily
Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its
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According to policy set by the regents, responsibility for the editorial
content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its student editors.
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Bill Allen
Barb Branda
David Creamer
Mark Davis
Kurt Eberhardt
Phil Tsai
Daniel Shattil
Katherine Policky
Barb Branda
Sandl Stuewe
Mary Hupf
Brian Hoglund
Joe Thomsen
Don Walton, 473-7301
W If A LAUQHNG W j)f' , 'ih.MVP
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Being human in a world of
contradictions is so confusing
Being human sure has its draw
backs at times. Oh, sure, it has
definite advantages over being,
say, reptilian, but that is hardly a com
fort when I am sorrowing in the realiza
tion of my own finitude. Perhaps the
most frustrating task I face in this
regard is the inability to understand
certain things that go on around me.
This frustration is redoubled by the
apparent fact that these things actu
ally do make sense, and I am just not
seeing what is intuitively obvious to
others.
For example, I don't understand the
right to self-determination and home
rule which Nicaragua apparently has, ,
but South Africa doesn't have. Now, in
no way, shape, or form do I condone the "
oppressive act ions of the South African
government. I am just curious as to why
the same people who see it as a moral
obligation to pile sanctions and dirty
rhetoric on this government also see it
as the height of arrogance and impe
rialistic domination for the United
States to attempt the same tactics in
retaliation to human rights violations
south of the border.
Another thing I don't understand is
the schizophrenia that will allow us to
spend millions of dollars in research
and thousands of dollars in each
instance to go to every length to save
the life of a premature infant, born
without the strength to survive, while
we would have granted the mother the
right to destroy the same fetus just
hours earlier. I don't understand the
reasoning that makes right to life con
tingent on timing or location.
L. )
h )
James
Sennett
Of course, I don't understand the
mentality which screams about the
sanctity of life outside abortion clinics,
then pickets governments for decreased
social spending to help those already
born and increased defense to make
sure we can annihilate any lives we
don't particularly like. It doesn't make
sense to me that right to life should be
denied six weeks before birth; it also
doesn't make sense to me that it
should be denied fifteen or twenty or
seventy years after birth, either. But
then again, I'm only human.
Finally, I don't understand, if the
United States is so horrible and life
behind the Iron Curtain is so desirable,
why is it that people are always trying
to get out of there and over here? The
Yurchenko case not withstanding, the
machine guns on the Berlin Wall only
face west. And I don't remember ever
hearing Jane Pauley interview someone
who has been trying for thirteen years
to get out of the United States to rejoin
his or her spouse in the Soviet Union,
only to have every effort thwarted by
the United States government.
In this scientific age, I'm just naive
enough to ask for successful experi
mentation before making claims and
instituting changes which affect mil
lions of lives. I don't understand the
willingness to say, "It's failed every
time in the past, but boy it's gonna
work for us!" That doesn't make sense
to me. But then again. . . .
Sennett is a UNL graduate student in
philosophy and a campus minister of the
College Career Christian Fellowship.
Family is sharing 'me' with 'we'
Soon they will be together again,
all the people who travel between
their own lives and each other's.
The package tour of the season will
lure them this week to the family table.
By Thursday feast day, family day,
Thanksgiving Day Americans who
value individualism like no other peo
ple will collect around a million tables
in a ritual of belonging.
They will assemble their families the
way they assemble dinner: each one
bearing a personality as different as
cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. For
one dinner they will cook for each
other, fuss for each other, feed each
other and argue with each other.
They will nod at their common herit
age, the craziness and caring of other
generations. They will measure their
common legacy...the children.
All these complex cells, these men
and women, old and young, with differ
ent dreams and disappointments will
give homage again to the group they are
a part of and apart from: their family.
Families and individuals. The "we"
and the "I." As good Americans we all
travel between these two ideals.
We take value trips from the great
American notion of individualism to
the great American vision of family. We
wear out our tires driving back and
forth, using speed to shorten the dis
tance between these two principles.
There has always been some pave
ment between a person and a family.
From the first moment we recognize
that we are separate, we begin to wres
tle with aloneness and togetherness.
.Here and new these conflicts are
especially acute. We are, after all,
raised in families...to be individuals.
This double message follows us through
life.
We are taught about the freedom of
the "I" and the safety of the "we." The
loneliness of the "I" and the intrusive
ness of the "we." The selfishness of the
"I" and the burdens of the "we."
We are taught what Andrew Malraux
said; "Without a family, man, alone in
the world, trembles with the cold."
And taught what he said another
day: "The denial of the supreme impor
tance of the mind's development
accounts for many revolts against the
family."
, .
Ellen
Goodman
In theory, the world rewards "the
supreme importance" of the individ
ual, the ego. We think alone, inside our
heads. We write music and literature
with an enlarged sense of self. We are
graded and paid, hired and fired, on our
own merit.
The rank individualism is both ex
cited and cruel. Here is where the fit
test survive.
The family, on the other hand, at its
best, works very differently. We don't
have to achieve to be accepted by our
families. We just have to be. Our mem
bership is not based on credentials but
on birth.
As Malraux put it, "A friend loves
you for your intelligence, a mistress for
your charm, but your family's love is
unreasoning: You were born into it and
of its flesh and blood."
The family is formed not for the sur
vival of the fittest but for the weakest.
It is not an economic unit but an emo
tional one. This is not the place where
people ruthlessly compete with each
other but where they work for each
other.
Its business is taking care, and when
it works, it is not callous but kind.
There are fewer heroes, fewer stars
in family life. While the world may glor
ify the self, the family asks us, at one
time or another, to submerge it. While
the world may abandon us,, the family
promises, at one time or another, to
protect us.
S.o we commute daily, weekly, yearly
between one world and another. Be
tween a life as a family member that
can be nurturing or smothering Be
tween life as an individual that can free
us or flatten us. We vacillate between
two separate sets of demands and
possibilities.
The people who will gather around
this table Thursday live in both of these
worlds, a part of and apart from each
other. With any luck the territory they
travel from one to another can be a
fertile one, rich with care and space. It
can be a place where the "I" and the
"we" interact.
On this day, at least, they will bring
to each other something both special
and something to be shared: these
separate selves.
(This column was originally written
for Thanskgiving 1980).
1985, The Boston Globe Newspaper Co.
Washington Post Writers Group
Goodman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
columnist for the Boston Globe.