Friday, January 31, 1986
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Vicki Ruhga, Editor, 472,1766
Thorn Gabrukicwicz, Managing Editor
Ad Hudler, Editorial Page Editor
James Rogers, Editorial Associate
Chris Welsch, Copy Desk Chief
Nsbrayskan
Daily
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JOHN
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University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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'86 graduates consider valuable gifts
The class of 1986 senior gift
could leave its mark on
UNL.
No, it won't be a giant clock,
some new park benches or a
ringing towe
This year's selections, made
by an NU Student Foundation
committee, could help improve
the quality of education at the
university and provide a practi
cal service for future students.
The committee's four choices
are:
O a $5,000 sal; y increase for
an outstanding UNL instructor
money for a lecture series
O money to expand library
resources
kiosks, outdoor student in
formation centers that would
include campus maps, space for
announcements and possibly tele
phones. Of the choices, the top three
are an endowment for a faculty
member, library resources like
new books or computer-assisted
resources and the money for a
lecture series.
Risks necessary
Manned space flight should go on
In light of Tuesday's explosion
of the Space Shuttle Chal
lenger, some people have ques
tioned the justification of con
tinuing a manned space program.
Such a sentiment is mistaken.
Certainly the explosion of
Challenger caught the world by
surprise. Tuesday morning brought
everyone to an abrupt stop as
they stared in disbelief, watch
ing the crew of seven perish in an
explosion over the Atlantic Ocean.
In mourning, flags this week
are flown at half-staff. The tragedy
is still fresh in the United States'
memory.
But Tuesday's setback shouldn't
burden further space explora
tion. The United States should
continue its manned space
research and journeys. The shut
tle program should keep pace
with its pre-accident schedule
as soon as the cause of Tuesday's
accident is discovered.
The loss of seven heroes is
great, but their heroism bears
witness for continuing the pro
gram, not a frightened retrench
ment. When tragedy strikes, it is
All instructors deserve raises
Earlier this month, the NU
Board of Regents approved
a $5,600 raise for NU foot
ball coach Tom Osborne an
increase from $78,000 to $83,600.
Osborne's pay compares with
$65,500 for UNL Athletic Direc
tor Bob Devaney, $86,525 for UNL
Chancellor Martin Massengale
As ASUN President Gerard
Keating said, UNL is years behind
other universities in the number
and diversity of lecturers.
The least practical choice
would be the kiosks. While the
information centers might be
helpful to some students, the
university needs more educa
tional tools, such as books, lec
turers and teacher incentives.
Class gifts have great poten
tial they are a way to say
thank you to the university.
Although the 1985 class gift
was rooted in good intentions, it
fell short because the campus
had little use for two huge clocks
costing $50,000.
The '86 graduates and UNL
students and faculty members
should salute the gift selection
committee for this year's worth
while, practical ideas.
The graduating seniors should
consider giving $86 (or as much
as they can afford) to fix their
university. They have a chance to
give much more than a gift.
easy to sit back, sheepishly avoid
ing risks. But rightful sentiment
of NASA, of the heroes and of
Americans in general, has been
to take those risks. Americans
take pride in pressing the limits,
and they recognize that risks are
taken to expand these limits.
Also, private citizens like
Christa McAuliffe should con
tinue to join the shuttle crews in
their endeavors. Teachers and
journalists another group
scheduled on a shuttle flight
represent the hopes and
dreams of average Americans
and help communicate the
worthiness of the space program.
In following decades, space
exploration may be a way of life.
Efforts should continue to inte
grate all Americans with the
space program.
The U.S. space program has
been fortunate: It has managed
to escape death in the last 55
flights.
In spite of the risks, flights
should continue. The history of
progress and scientific advance
ment is replete with heroes who
paid the price heroes like the
Challenger seven.
and $90,000 for NU President
Ronald Roskens.
Osborne is a fine coach and an
outstanding citizen. He deserves
the raise.
But so do the many UNL in
structors who spend hours in the
classroom and evenings and week
ends grading papers.
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Anti-Lied group seeks increase policy awareness
F
aster than a construction worker
can adjust his hard hat, they are
back.
Everyone else who had opposed the
mighty Lied Center for the Performing
Arts project had already shouted
"uncle" and begun saving money for
opera tickets. But they are just prepar
ing to roll up their sleeves and do some
serious protesting.
Jonathan
Taylor
Although they're a group as new as
today's Daily Nebraskan, they have the
potential to become a particularly
popular unifying force on this campus
quickly. They are the Students Against
the Lied Center.
To the NU Foundation they might be
just a bunch of hooligans trying to close
an iron curtain between Nebraska and
the performing arts. But to the rest of
us, especially those with pent-up rebel
lious tendencies, they are the faceless
White House shield keeps Star Wars
from Gramm-Rudman budget slashes
In case you have been up nights
worrying, there is at least one
defensive shield already in place on
this planet. It's the shield the White
House is using to protect the funding
for Star Wars. From all reports, it's
impenetrable.
Ellen
Goodman
In theory, the sword of Gramm
Rudman was supposed to cut budgets
for every weapons program by 4.9 per
cent, including the Strategic Defense
Initiative. But the administration raised
its shield to make sure the president's
pet celestial project won't be nicked.
As of this moment, the Star Wars
program is perhaps the only sheltered
workshop for scientists in the entire
federal budget. Whether we can afford
it or not, we are financing the highest
tech defense research in human history.
The Star Wars money is going to be
spent to further and produce the ideas
of an elite cadre of scientists who
unlike Gramm, Rudman, or Reagan
are unknown to the average citizen.
Now there is a glimpse or two into
the world of the young scientists work
ing on space-age weaponry. William
UALi 1U &J L 1 iJMl u H el
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nave realistic o
few at UNL brave enou$fi to face the
wrecking balls of life and say, "Hey,
you're bumming us out."
But James Vigesaa and Gary Long
sine, the UNL brain children of SALC,
have given us more than a mere clan of
students fighting the powers that be.
They have also given us the opportunity
to be a part of a group with realistic
goals.
Of course, it would make wonderful
news stories if Students Against the Lied
Center painted peace signs all over the
DEB Construction Co. equipment and
camped in the site of the proposed Lied
Center and parking lots until the demo
lition workers, with smiles on their
faces, said "Aw, heck," and drove
their bulldozers and cranes away into
the sunset. But that only happens in
the movies. The SALC has no intention
to stop construction of the center
single-handedly.
Instead, the group has a much more
feasible goal.
Rather than go through some dra
matic but unsuccessful attempts at
fomenting campuswide anti-Lied sen
timent, Longsine and Vigesaa want to
increase awareness. They are going to
the quick of the Lied Center controv
ersy the university and NU Founda
tion's policy of accepting grants on a
Broad, a science reporter, visited a crit
ical mass of them in Livermore, Calif.,
the home of the Lawrence Livermore
Lab, one of the two nuclear research
labs4n the country. Here he found the
men of O-Group, whom he dubbed
"Star Warriors" in his new book by the
same name.
These warriors wear no green berets.
They wear no uniforms at all, unless
you consider jeans, checked shirts and
running shoes a dress code. Nor do they
eat regulation meals, unless a diet of
fast food and ice cream is required.
- Broad's sketches make a composite
picture of a group described by an
inside critic as "bright young hotshots
who are socially maladjusted." An intel
lectual cadre high on Coca-Cola and
competition.
He retraces the way the best and the
brightest graduates of MIT and Cal
Tech were collected by the group
leader, Lowell Wood, to work on nuclear
weaponry. They were lured by a combi
nation of money, high camaraderie and,
perhaps most of all, the freedom to
pursue happiness in the form of "inter
esting problems."
As Peter Hagelstein, one of the more
complicated personalities at Livermore
and creator of the X-Ray Laser Beam,
explained: "My view of weapons has
changed. Until 1980 or so I didn't want
to have anything to do with nuclear
anything. Back in those days I thought
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conditional basfs.
Last spring the estate of Las Vegas
car dealer Ernst Lied offered the uni
versity a $10 million donation under
the condition that it raise an addi
tional $10 million and use it to build
some sort of memorial to Lied which
the estate would choose. The university
came up with three proposals from
which the Lied Center was selected.
NU was not the only school in the
running for the money, but since Lied
graduated from UNL, we received the
donation. If the university would not
have compiled with the Lied estate's
conditions, the money would have gone
somewhere else, said Ed Hirsch, exec
utive vice president of the foundation.
These kinds of financial grant stipu
lations are part of the basis for SALC's
protests, Longsine said in an earlier DN
article.
Indeed, such conditions set by donors
limit the university and fuels controv
ersies. The university has many ailing
elements that even a fraction of the $10
million could cure. The university
should be free to help itself where it
needs to most. Let's hope Students
Against the Lied Center will succeed in
publicizing this crucial point.
Taylor is a UNL senior in journalism
and a Daily Nebraskan senior reporter.
there was something fundamentally
evil about weapons. Now I see it as an
interesting physics problem."
The motives of a computer star-whiz,
Rod Hyde, who was graduated from MIT
at 19, are somewhat less earthbound:
"What I want more than anything is
essentially to get the human race into
space. It's the future. If you stay down
here, some disaster is going to strike
and you're going to get wiped. If you get
into space and spread out there's no
chance of the human race disap
pearing." There are snatches of psyche as well
as philosophy to be culled from the
Broad annals. Another scientist, Larry
West, chose his field as a haven from a
difficult childhood.
"Science was a world that was pure
and no longer had emotions," he says.
"It would never go away and would
never leave you. And it was always cor
rect. There was always a right answer.
So it had a strong attraction for me
emotionally."
But these snippets make the young
Star Warriors sound spacy. This is only
part of the story. The atmosphere of the
all-male O-Group, reads like a science
house fraternity, complete with boyish
pranks and competitions. The brains
who are the hired guns in the national
defense scheme don't seem to know
See GOODMAN on 5