Thursday, February 20, 1986 Page 4 Daily Nebraskan TT J Nebn&kan University of Nebraska-Lincoln It does't serve UNL The Committee on Fees Allo cation justifiably voted against continuing UNL stu dent fee support for the Nebraska State Student Association. UNL participation in NSSA simply does not promote the interests of the university or its students. UNL is unique among post secondary educational institu tions in Nebraska. The mandate to be a research institution sig nificantly alters the environment and tenor of the school as com pared with other Nebraska insti tutions. Here the pursuit of ex cellence comes not only through good teaching, but also from these same teachers being on and developing the academic cutting edge of their respective disciplines. The structure of NSSA is in sufficient to promote this core concern of UNL. NSSA seeks to promote only those interests common to all member institu tions. To that extent, then, it cannot and will not strengthen the unique attributes that make UNL a vital and special institu tion of learning. NSSA submerges UNL inter ests and assumes an institutional continuity that does not exist in reality. While NSSA may be appropriate for non-UNL post secondary schools, it isn't here, given UNL's unique concerns. Research jeopardized Universities need U.S. investments U.S. corporations are too oriented toward the short term. A truly competitive spirit is based upon long-run planning; essential to long-run planning is investment in basic research and development. U.S. corporations so lack such a committment that their con tributions for basic research at U.S. universities lags significantly when compared with investments by foreign corporations. ' Washington University law pro fessor Bernard Reams recently pointed out that over the last five years there has been "a significant increase in scientific-research agreements among prestigious American universities and foreign corporations." These agreements, Reams says, many times extend over decades and involve tens of millions of dollars. In contrast, U.S. corpor ations typically support only short-term work and then do not invest in basic research and development because of the un certainty of immediate corporate gratification on the investment. The long-term competitive edge of U.S. business is threatened by their own near-sighted research sponsorship. First, the U.S. in ternational economic advantage or at least what's left of it lies in information and tech nology. If U.S. business loses the Vicki Ruhga, Editor, 472-1766 Thorn Gabrukiewicz, Managing Editor Ad Hudler, Editorial Page Editor James Rogers, Editorial Associate Chris Welsch, Copy Desk Chief Second, UNL already has groups specifically charged with prom oting the institution's and stu dents' political interests. These are the Government Liai son Committee and ASUN. NSSA usurps these organizations' func tions when it claims to represent UNL students. Only ASUN and GLC are officially charged with looking out for the interests of UNL students. Finally, there's the money: $24,000 isn't chicken feed. Whether UNL actually gets that much return on the investment is problematic at best. At the least, the money could be better spent in the hands of ASUN or GLC. CFA can do no wrong if it cuts NSSA funding: On the one hand. If NSSA is considered to be a valuable group by UNL students, then they will voluntarily join the group and pay the organiza tion's fees. NSSA wouldn't lose much. On the other hand, if CFA ' cuts NSSA funding and students do not join, then CFA correctly gauged the fact that students are not interested in the group and do not wish to fund it. Given either choice, the CFA action is appropriate because it forces NSSA to stand upon its own merits in order to get its funding. technological race, they will lose the world to their more farsighted foreign competitors. A second factor magnifying such a loss, is that while U.S. corporations lose their tech nological edge, foreign corpora tions directly gain exactly that which U.S. firms lose: Research contracts between foreign cor porations and U.S. universities give the foreign firms priority with respect to the commercial development , of any resulting discoveries. Reams wrote: "Advances in high technology are coming at a rapid pace, often faster than U.S scientists had expected. Cor porate America is going to find itself contractually shut out of much of this action unless it gets more involved in long-term R&D. efforts in the academic sector." Currently, less than 5 percent of university research funding comes from U.S. corporations and that figure does not indicate the instability of the funds for specific projects. In this case, what's good for business is good for the university: Long-term competitive survival requires that U.S. firms once again assume responsibility for their own futures and become the risk-taking entrepreneurs that placed U.S. firms in their once advantageous competitive positions. iji,iirin,iMi"'il'M'Ti Hi-nrm i '"" ' 11111 11 - 11 "'' 1 " " inn W 1L. V f FIRED he 'chic We may believe that we're better, but often we're not r ne of the issues raised during the I I rnntrnvprsv over "Hail Marv" J (Wait! This is not a column about the film, so please don't run and hide behind the nearest cryptic personal) was the suggestion of a possible differ- ence in social acceptability between racial slur and religious slur. Though such discrepancy may not have been at play in this particular instance, it cer tainly does represent i general social flaw. I call such a phenomenon "chic ethics," and it is one of the oldest games around. Allow me to elaborate, Consider for a moment 7-year-old situation comedy reruns. You know the kind I'm talking about. They come on between 4 and 6 p.m. (when you're supposed to be studying) and between 10 p.m. and midnight (when you're supposed to be sleeping). These pro grams reflect the victories of the 'GOs and 70s over racial prejudice. There are black and ethnic co-stars, a lack of racial slur and subject matter dealing with the problems of racism. What these shows don't reflect is the current sensitivity over sexual prefer ence discrimination. Gays are stereo typed, laughed at, and made the sub jects of lighthearted (and curel) plot twists. Yet, in 1978 we were convinced that we were not a prejudiced people. We had come through 20 years of biog try contiousness, and we just knew that we had rid ourselves of that primi tive fault. It was not vogue in 1978 to be racially prejudiced. But, since we couldn't laugh at blacks anymore, we decided to laugh at gays. Today, of course, we have overcome such pathetic narrowmindedness. The past few years have taught us that gays are people, too. We are so proud of ourselves for finally having really over- come bigotry. Our situation comedies Aldermen should share Marcos' defense: 'But I fight Commies!' Slats Grobnik put aside his beer stained newspaper and said: "I just figured out the perfect defense for all of the Chicago aldermen who are being investigated for pocket-stuffing." Let me guess. They plead innocent on the grounds that they were mentally impaired, the proof of which is that they were stupid enough to get caught. "Hey, that's not bad. But the perfect defense is this guy Marcos in the Phillipines." What does he have to do with it? He didn't steal any votes in Chicago. "No, but tell me this: Is there any Chicago alderman who can compare to Marcos?" Compare in what way? "Well, how about as a thief?" Of course not. All the aldermen in the city's history didn't put together a stash as big as Marcos. He has exten ethic 5 pi I 1? M don't poke fun at gays anymore. Now we onlv Doke fun at religious fanatics, poor people and rural Americans. I'm so glad we finally ripped the last vestiges of favoritism from our selectively superior psyches, Another example of such chic ethics is our attitude toward certain lifestyle practices. Thirty years ago it was the height of cool for Humphrey Bogart to have a cigarette hanging off his lip. Today, we warn against the dangers of cigarette smoking and urge people to quit. We also warn against the dangers of alcohol abuse and urge people to James Sennett drink responsibly. I wonder why we never speak of "responsible smoking"? Social drinking is in vogue smoking is not. (Do not let it be said that I am defending smoking. But I do believe that smokers are as much victims of Pi chic ethics as gays were a decade ago. Our passion for current trends in respon Or is the drinkers who are really the sible behavior leads us to overestimate victims?) What can we learn from this? Two things at least. First we must come face to face with the truth. We do not represent the final synthesis in man- kind's search for ethical purity and try- ing to discover further areas where we fail. Our thinking is often as clouded and prejudicial as those of our ances tors, though we have learned to be quite subtle and sophisticated about it. Prejudice against ignorance and bigotry are, after all, the last two sive real estate holdings in New York and other big investments. The man is generally acknowledged to have piled up a fortune in the hundred of millions. Maybe billions. Most of our guys are happy to pocket the price of a vacation in Miami. "What about as a mug?" Mike Royko No comparison. Even the most in sensitive of our aldermen don't have their opponents bumped off, especially in the presence of TV cameras, as Mar cos has done. He, or at least his follow t enosnenon strongholds of intellectual snobbery. We can also learn not to commit the fallacy of anachronistic accusation. The recent controversy over "The Adventures of Huckeberry Finn" illus trates this common arrogance. We have decided that racism is wrong (whic h, of course, it is), so we now believe t hat we have the right to project our current understanding of proper race relations backward in time. Anyone who did not see things exactly as we do now is racist, and our children should be pro tected from them. Such synchronic myopia will inti mately lead to the conclusion that the past has nothing to offer, since the attitudes and actions of those in the past will always be in some sense infe rior to ours. Let's just totally rewrite history while we're at it, so no one will ever have to know that times were ever any different from the way they are now. Such a line of thought is, after all, completely consistent with the illusion mentioned above that we are the per fect culmination of human moral development. What appears to be ethical advance ment can so easily (and ironically) lead to elitism of the most dangerous kind, the importance of our own time and station and understand the importance of others. Everyone says we're not per fect, and no one believes it. Well, start believing it. Ours is at best the latest word in an incomplete dialogue. Proper appreciation for our contributions does not demand (in fact it screams out against) deification of ourcurrent level of understanding. Sennett is a UNL graduate student in philosophy and campus minister of the College Career Christian Fellowship. ers, take politics so seriously that they zap the opposition after the voting is over and they've won. They know how t o hold a grudge. "And how is he as a liar?" Once again, Marcos is in his own class. Historians recently discovered that he concocted almost completely his heroic World War II record. He got himself a chest full of medals for lead ing a resistance group that didn't even exist. He's even suspected of having collaborated with the Japanese. A few of our aldermen have police records, but that's expected of them. "That's what I mean. Here's a world class bum. Murder, stealing money, stealing elections, faking his back ground. And how long has he been doing this stuff." See ROYKO on 5