Thursday, January 23, 1986
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
HOW STAR WARS WILL WORK
Vicki Ruhga, Editor, 472,1766
Thorn Gabrukicwicz, Managing Editor
Ad Hudler, Editorial Page Editor
James Rogers, Editorial Associate
Chris Welsch, Copy Desk Chief
Nebra&kan
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lasi legislation
UNL has few defaulters
Congress this season will look
at a way to revamp the
country's student loan pro
grams. If passed, the proposal
would prompt universities and
colleges to re-examine the way
they distribute loans.
Fortunately, UNL doesn't have
a record of high loan default, and
probably wouldn't be affected by
the amendment. Other universi
ties, however, could be greatly
affected.
The amendment to the Higher
Education Act of 1985, sponsored
by Rep. William Goodling, R
Penn., would give more power to
state agencies that distribute
federal loans to universities and
colleges. Under current law, col
leges can find another agency to
get federal funding from if they
are dropped because of high
loan-default rates. Goodling's
amendment, however, would pro
hibit other loan agencies from
serving an institution that has
been dropped. The secretary of
education would, in turn, have to
approve any agency's decision to
drop an institution.
The amendment represents con
gressional concern about an in
creasing number of student loan
defaulters students who don't
repay their loans. Nationally,
almost 8 percent of students who
take out loans eventually default
on them.
UNL has no such problem.
Don Aripoli, UNL director of
Scholarships and Financial Aid,
says UNL has a default rate of
about 3 percent. He attributes
weir switch
Law aimed at reducing deficit
Last week, Mayor Roland
Luedtke said Lincoln will
not escape feeling the im
pact of the Gramm-Rudman
deficit reduction law.
Luedtke estimated that Lin
coln could directly lose more
than $1 million and face other
more indirect affects. In response
to federal cutbacks, Luedtke pre
dicted that higher city property
taxes andor service cuts will be
needed.
Lincoln residents should accept
local tax increases with little
grumbling because one major
purpose of laws such as Gramm
Rudman is to shift the level of
government responsibility to the
local level. Thus local spending
should not be expected to remain
at the same level, let alone
decrease, in response to Rea
gan's "New Federalism" policy.
In cutting back on certain
federal programs, the national
government isn't saying the
nation doesn't need such pro
grams. Rather, the federal govern
ment is saying these programs
can better be implemented at
the state or local level.
The advantage of local im
plementation and administration
is that policies can be tailor
fitted to the specific needs of the
local area.
Rather than bemoaning the
loss of Big Brother's heavy hand
that low figure to Nebraskans'
debt consciousness and honesty.
In addition, most UNL students
come from small towns where
there are pressures to take care
of financial obligations, he said.
But it's a different story for
smaller schools, which often have
higher loan-default rates. An
article in the Chronicle of Higher
Education said smaller colleges
would be affected by the amend
ment because their student
populations consist mainly of
low-income students which
makes those schools a financial
risk for loan agencies. Some
worry that the amendment would
discriminate against people
other than middle-class students
attending four-year institutions,
the Chronicle said.
Before dropping a school from
its loan program, an agency would
have to consider several factors,
the Chronicle said, including the
school's decision-making process
on loan distribution and the
availability of loan-repayment in
formation to students.
UNL has little to worry about
in this area as well. Aripoli said
when UNL students sign up for
the loans, they are told what
their repayment responsibilities
are.
The Goodling amendment,
whether Congress passes it or
not, should make colleges sit
back and examine the efficiency
of ther loan programs some
thing very important in these
days of expensive education.
and paternalistic policy pamper
ing, Lincolnites should eagerly
exploit the advantage of the
increase in local responsibility
and power. They should emphas
ize creative and imaginative ways
of responding to the needs of the
community in light of the federal
cutbacks. Obviously, cities need
more revenue to adequately pur
sue these needed policies.
In defending the then-proposed
U.S. Constitution in Federalist
Paper No. 46, James Madison
argued against the view that the
national government and state
governments were rivals, isolated
from one another. Madison said
federal and state governments
simply were different manifesta
tions of the public will, each
with its own complementary
powers and purposes.
In recent elections, the Amer
ican people have given strong
indication that the balance of
power has shifted too greatly
toward Washington and that some
restructuring of state-federal roles
is required.
In the re-emphasis of real fed
eralism, Lincoln residents should
orient themselves toward the
local impact of our desired
national policy. They should give
Luedtke a vote of confidence to
take necessary steps to lead Lin
coln into a new era of municipal
responsibility.
r. Kina
w-J$w
Anybody here seen my old friend
Martin
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it
seems the good, they die young
I just looked around, and he was
gone.
Dion
On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray
pulled the trigger of a high
powered rifle, and the most
ardent proponent of non-violence since
Gandhi died as is so often the case
with champions of peace most vio
lently. I was a 12-year-old Southerner
living in northeast Arkansas, and the
only thing I can remember about that
day was the sighs of relief and even
expressions of joy that "someone finally
got that uppity nigger."
I can still recall people around me
saying, "Why if that Martin Luther King
had his way, coloreds and whites would
use the same public restrooms!" And it
was said with the same ardent disbelief
with which others, a decade later,
would say, "If those women's libbers
had their way, men and women would
use the same public restrooms!" It was
just as unthinkable, just as catastro
phic an idea
I have lived with the shame of that
heritage all my life. I was a mere child,
under the influence of such hatred and
bigotry, during King's ministry. I
watched with indifference at the hos
ing of black demonstrators in Montgo
mery, Ala., and was convinced that the
nation's higher education system was
headed for destruction when the first
black man was admitted under mil
itary protection to the University of
He brought us closer to 'liberty and justice for all'
Reality of King's efforts
to administration's warped memory
The one and only time I met Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was after
he had called a press conference
to announce that he would lead a
massive march t in, New, YorkCity to;
protest the Vietnam War. Another time,
I sort of met him. I interviewed a former
Mississippi deputy sheriff who had
been convicted of conspiracy in the
killing of three civil-rights workers and
who, before that, had jailed the future
Nobel Prize winner. He pronounced
him a great man. "That Dr. King, he had
something," said Cecil Ray Price.
I raise these two instances because,
as Jesse Jackson has pointed out, the
reality of King is being bleached and
his memory expropriated by people
who were, when it counted, his critic
and enemy. The truth of the matter is
that King went to jail. The truth is that
King was a dissenter. The truth is that
King was, in some ways, a revolutionary
a dreamer yes, but a brawler, too. He
fought like hell for justice.
This all has to be said because the
.7 I "V NAT' I
V' VL. "
deserves
mar
Mississippi.
But what shook me was the callous
ness with which my mentors greeted
the cold-blooded murder of an inno
cent man. I would never be innocent
again.
I have since learned that the ignor
ance and bigotry I saw then was not
limited to the South, which was so
maligned during the civil rights move
ment. I have spent the last nine years
in the North and have encountered as
much white supremacy and racism as I
ever did during my years below the
Mason-Dixon line.
James
Sennett
In Illinois and Indiana I encoun
tered latent and blatent social struc
tures that guaranteed that blacks
"knew their place" and stayed in it.
Those who sat with me in church pews
and espoused faith in the Christ in
whom there is "neither Jew nor Greek,
slave nor free, male nor female," were
still quick to pollute my mind with the
latest ethnic joke.
In Nebraska I have encountered
prejudice from a totally new perspec
tive. People here do not know what
blacks are. The saturation of Anglo
Saxons in this state, outside of one
small corner of Omaha, allows many to
grow to adulthood without once having
the opportunity to build a significant
relationship with a black person. Such
an inbred existence is detrimental to
King praised by President Reagan and
Edwin Meese could take a place on the
dais of a Chamber of Commerce lunch
-and get nothing but pats on the back.
.They have made him a flag bearer in the
giant patriotic parade now marching
down the middle of America. The real
King, with sadness but with firmness,
would have said that this parade is not
for him. He would, if you don't mind,
have dropped off in the ghetto where
things are now said to be going so well.
Richard
Cohen
It is wonderful that Reagan and
company have finally gotten around to
recognizing King's greatness. More
power to them. But if they are to recog
nize King, then recognize the man he
was not the man they wish he had
. V
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'W J ML
mis oay
the development of a color-blind men
tality. That lack of exposure is no excuse
for allowing our social development to
become retarded. None of us reaches
responsible adulthood without being
made painfully aware of the negative
results of active and passive racism.
Responsible living involves the intel
ligent altering of embedded irrational
notions. Now is the time that we must
decide in our own lives that King's
dream did not die with him. We are all
brothers and sisters, and we are all
under obligation to each other to see
that civil and human rights are pro
tected and responsibly employed.
I applaud the recognition of King's
birthday as a national holiday. I do so
as much for emotional reasons as I do
for rational ones. I have lived for 18
years with the realization that we fol
lowed in the footsteps of ancient Israe
lites; who, in the words of Jesus, "Mur
dered the prophets and stoned those
sent to you." Our repentence must
involve recognition of what we failed to
recognize so long ago.
Lest you need justification beyond
the heart, let me submit the following
rationale. If George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln were national heroes,
then so was Martin Luther King. No
less than they, he was the father of a
national movement that led us many
giant steps closer to being what this
country has purported to be for more
than 200 years "nation under God,
God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all. "
Sennett is a UNL graduate student in
philosophy and campus minister of the
College-Career Christian Fellowship.
lost
been. He was the guy conservatives
hated the'one they tailed a comniu:
nist. He was suspected of being in the
pay, of the North Vietnamese or var
iously,' the Soviets' ejwas a firebrand
and troublemaker the supposed
catalysts for riots and crime. He was
the civil-rights leader whom the FBI
bugged. They put listening devices m
the motel rooms where he stayed and
his most intimate conversations were
passed around Washington for the
cheap thrills of creeps and racists.
Now, of course, King is being praised
as a patriot who would have cheered
"Rocky IV." But that, alas, is because
he is dead and his cause civil rights
no longer controversial. If he were
alive today, he would be called all sorts
of names. At the very least, Jeane Kirk
patrick would call him a "San Fran
cisco Democrat" one of the Blame-America-First
crowd who has no place
either in U.S. politics or, for sure, at the
See COHEN on 5
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