Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Wednesday, September 3, 198?
1G
NebraMcan
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Grants should be restored
It's bad enough when student
athletes like Nebraska I-back
Doug DuBose are denied the
chance to compete in their favor
ite sports due to injuries. But
what happened to Husker gym
nasts Janet Holling and Renee
Gould after both were hurt last
year shouldn't happen ever.
Holling and Gould, both soph
omores last year, had their scho
larships revoked in April by
women's gymnastics coach Rick
Walton. The injuries both suf
fered last year, they said in the
Aug. 27 Daily Nebraskan, caused
Walton's action. Because the ap
plication deadline for academic
scholarships and other financial
aid had passed, they were left
with no aid at all.
That's pathetic. More impor
tantly, it's against the law a
2-year-old statute sponsored by
Omaha Sen. Ernest Chambers
specifically prohibits taking away
an athletic scholarship due to
injury. The remedy Chambers
proposed last week is the only
one possible: Holling's and
Gould's scholarships must be
restored.
The law's meaning is clear. It
says: "No public post-secondary
educational institution in the
State of Nebraska shall, prior to
graduation, reduce, cancel or
refuse to renew an athletic
PAW stats douMed
Group's self-reporting slants figures
When something is wrong,
advocating restraint is
never a popular position.
Yet recently, too many advocates
of "public interest" issues seem
to be getting a little too zealous
in opposing wrong.
For example, earlier this sum
mer a congressional hearing was
called to investigate the exag
gerated claims of groups involved
with missing children. Nobody
disputed that missing children
were a legitimate concern, yet no
one was helped by the hype
caused by the irresponsible
claims made about the extent of
the problem.
In a similar vein, a recently
released survey by People for the
American Way (PAW) showed
significant increases in censor
sip attempts.
While censorship is serious
issue, PAW's statistics must be
viewed with caution. They tell a
scary story: A 35 percent increase
in censorship attempts over the
last year, and over a 200 percent
increase over the last four years.
However, the way the survey was
done its methodology calls
for serious examination.
According to the Associated
Press, "most of the incidents
listed in the organization s re
port were culled from newspaper
clippings or tips from People for
the American Way's members."
In short, the figures were derived
from reports.
This methodology brings to
mind another series of statistics
that were based on self-report
Jeff Korbclik, Editor, 472 1766
James Hirers, Editorial I'aije Editor
Gent' (icntrup, Mayiatjiua Editor
Tammy Kaup, Associate News Editor
Todd von Kampcn, Editorial I'aae Assistant
grant-in-aid to a student during
his or her period of eligibility to
compete in intercollegiate ath
letics solely because of an injury
which prevents the student from
participating in athletics."
No one can use the excuse, "I
didn't know about the law's pas
sage." James O'Hanlon, UNL's
faculty representative to the
NCAA and the Big Eight Confer
ence, testified before a legisla
tive committee about the law,
known then as LB764. If the uni
versity lost track of the bill after
that time, someone didn't carry
out responsibilities. But that
doesn't change the situation.
Even if the law didn't exist,
Holling and Gould shouldn't have
lost their scholarships. Many of
UNL's student-athletes need
those scholarships to attend
school, and a school's first
responsibility is to serve its stu
dents. If injured student-athletes
are considered expendable here
and UNL condones the practice,
we must agree with Chambers
"that the athletic department's
tail is wagging the academic
dog."
But the law does exist, and it's
obvious that the law was broken
when Holling and Gould lost
their scholarships. UNL has no
choice but to restore those scho
larships immediately.
ing. During the 1970s America
underwent what was thought to
be an almost geometical increase
of rape. The trend of increase
was considered terrifying and
intimidating to women.
Yet what was later discovered
was that most of the increase
reflected a greater number of
reported rapes that is, women,
as a result of education and as a
result of decreasing social stig
ma, were more willing to report
rapes and rape attempts.
Thus the increasing rate of
the statistic was in fact a reflec
tion that significant progress was
being realized in attempts to
deal with the problem.
It's not hard to believe that
given the vastly increased media
attention dedicated to censor
ship attempts in the last four
years as well as the increas
ing number of alert PAW mem
bers that the reported trend
is simply the result of increasing
reports and do not reflect real
increases in censorship attempts.
Censorship is a serious issue,
but so is rape and child-napping.
Exaggerated and skewed statis
tics ultimately only discredit
efforts to solve the problem.
After this summer's congres
sional hearings on distorted
missing children statistics, many
well-intentioned people were left
feeling embarrassed and used.
PAW should talre a lesson from
recent history and be more care
ful in how it presents its con
cerns to the public.
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All '0 camse not forgotten
Former hippie lashes out at litterbugs flitting around campus
I admit it. I'm a child of the '60s. I
grew up in the days of Vietnam, the
Beatles, Martin Luther King and the
mini-skirt. It made me what I am today
a war-torn, long-haired freedom
fighter with a thigh fetish. The causes
of those days sustain me at times when
I wonder if there are any causes any.
non-self-serving causes around
today. I often despair of signs that
altruism still exists in any non-theoretical
form. Even the recent "resur
gence" in social mindedness I keep
reading about strikes me as just a
nother way to "feel good about myself,"
if indeed it exists at all.
I hear from a lot of people very,
very young people who wish us ex
hippies longing for the good ol' days
would just shut up and give in to the
inevitable. But there are some forms of
inevitable I will never give in to. That,
after all, was the spirit of the times that
spawned me and many like me.
One of the big causes of the '60s was
beautification and environmental re
spect. Lady Bird Johnson made "Keep
America Beautiful" a battle cry to rival
"Remember the Alamo." Billboards
were pushed back off the highways,
mass murderers of fish and wildlife
were legislated out of existence, whales
were saved, and the snail darter held
up the construction of a multi-million
dollar hydroelectric dam for months.
The cause arrived not a moment too
soon. I remember the day Lake Erie
died. And I remember how long, tedious,
expensive and thank God suc
cessful the fight was to bring her back
to life. Many other lakes, streams and
ponds were not so lucky. Whole cities
were on the verge of suffocating in their
own industrial defecation. George Car
lin's parody was too true to be funny:
"0 beautiful for smog-filled skies,
Universe full of 'shadow matter'
newest wave of physics theory
Summer's end. Take a break from
tax reform, put down your anniversary
edition of "Gone with the Wind," and
imagine living in a universe with 10
dimensions. Four are familiar: length,
width, height and time. And the other
six, well, they are curled up every
where, unseen, unfelt, in an infinite
simal ball. Imagine, further, a universe
where everything from atoms to zygotes
is made up not of dot-like particles but
of sub-microscopic strings. Imagine,
finally, a universe full of "shadow mat
ter" real, heavy stuff: "Shadow
worlds" can be as massive as the solar
system, but utterly invisible.
Welcome to Earth and environs,
circa 1986, as construed by modern
physics or, more precisely, by its new
est wave, the superstring theory. You
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insecticided grain.For strip-mined
mountain's majesty above the asphalt
plains.America, America, man shed
his waste on thee.And hide the pines
with billboard signs from sea to oily
sea"
Of course, the battle has not been
won. In fact, we're playing even bigger
leagues these days with toxic and
nuclear waste, while the old laws limit
ing industrial prostitution of our natu
ral resources inch closer to extinction
daily.
James
Sennett
Well, by those standards, the com
plaint I bring today is infinitesimal,
different only in degree, not kind. I
hate litter. I know of no greater sign of
total self-indulgence and passive mis
anthropy than the malignant laziness
tht cannot hold on to a pop can 15
seconds to the nearest wastebasket.
There simply is no excuse for litter.
There is no other explanation than that
somebody somewhere just doesn't care.
And, judging from the looks of this
campus after just one week, I would say
it's a lot of somebodies.
I decided to do this column last
week, when I had no trouble finding my
way to Drop Add because I just fol
lowed the trail of computer paper
tractor-feed bursts (those little strips
with the holes in them.) At least 200
people couldn't even make it from the
may find it somewhat disconcerting
that there should be shadow worlds
hovering over your shoulder, like angels
in a D'urer painting.
Charles
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If so, let the New York Times reasssure
you. A recent analysis of string theory,
it reports, suggests that "apart from
Nemesis, the postulated 'death star'
that returns periodically to scatter
commets onto colision courses with
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second to the first floor of the union
without actively tearing those strips off
and dropping them on the floor. This
was not passive apathy, folks this
was senseless, premeditated eye-slaughter.
Our elementary-school teachers used
to say two things about litter. First
they'd say, "Anyone who would litter
shows that he or she has absolutely no
self respect." Then, when you were
caught littering, they'd say, "You don't
just throw things on the floor at home,
do you?" Both were effective tools, but I
don't want to fall back on them. I am
now to the point where, if you litter, I'm
not particularly interested in helping
you see what you are saying about your
self. You already know, and you don't
care.
So my message is, if you don't care
about yourself, big deal. But I get a
little upset when you don't care about
me or anybody else either. Self-respect
may entail respect of others, but it isn't
the other way around.
I don't care if your home is a pig sty
or not but don't turn my world into
one. If I come to your house, I'll respect
your decorating habits. But don't force
your Modern American Garbage decor
on me in public places.
The message is simple hold on to
your trash. This is UNL you are never
more than 30 seconds from some place
to throw it away. Keep your Daily
Nebraskan, your candy wrapper, your
English test, your dirty tissue and that
flyer the person outside the Union just
gave you out of my sight. After all, it's
only a short step from a litterbug to a
man who makes his living bludgeoning
baby seals.
James Sennett is a graduate student in
philosophy and campus minister w th
College-Career Christian FeUowship.
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the Earth, there are no large, invisible
objects within or near the solar sys
tem." Thank goodness.
But wait a minute. What's this about
Nemesis? I don't remember hearing
about him in grade school. Of course,
he hadn't been invented (pardon me,
postulated) yet. And even if he had, no
one would want to frighten little child
ren with the thought of a malevolent
brother to our Sun, locked in binary
embrace, periodically flinging comets
our way.
It gets worse. Just when you thought
it was safe to go out into the universe,
Princeton astronomers this May reported
finding (a finding later disputed) an
object so huge it could be the most
See KRAUTHAMMER on 5