Tuesday, October 28, 1986
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
T 1
Nebraskan
Unlvtrtlly of Ntbraika-Llncoln
MKoAelik, Editor, A72-I766
James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor
Gene Gentrup, Managing Editor
Tammy Kaup, Associate News Editor
Todd von Kampen, Editorial Page Assistant
No more tractors
Lab may lose money, prestige
Tractor testing doesn't sound
all that glamorous, but it's
something that has brought
UNL a certain amount of fame
and lots of money over the years.
Now that success has been ruined,
and apparently all we can do is
cry.
UNL's tractor testing lab,
located on East Campus, is the
United States' only university
tractor testing lab. It's been
operating since a state law was
passed in 1920 requiring tractors
sold in Nebraska to pass tests at ;
the lab. Tractor manufacturers
gradually turned to UNL as the
place to test their products and
paid a total of between $300,000
and $350,000 in an average year
for the tests.
Then the Legislature fixed
something that wasn't broken.
LB768, passed this year, changed
Nebraska's standards for tractor
tests to conform with interna
tional standards. The fallout has
been shocking. Testing at the
UNL lab is down 60 percent this
year, and lab officials fear the lab
will do no tests at all in 1987.
It sounds like the Legisla
ture's intentions were innocent
enough. The thinking, according
to the Omaha World-Herald, was
that the U.S. Commerce Depart
ment would make the UNL lab
the offical U.S. test center for the
Organization for Economic Co
operation Development (OECD),
which sets the international
standards for tractors. But the
Commerce Department hasn't
even decided whether the Uni
ted States will join OECD, much
less whether the UNL lab will be
the test center. In the meantime,
tractor manufacturers are test
ing in Europe, where testing
costs are only one-fifth of those
at UNL.
Imperial Sen. Rex Haberman,
sponsor of the bill that caused
all the trouble, told the World
Herald that tractor industry offi
cials sold state and university
officials on changing the law.
They said the UNL lab could be
named the official OECD test
center in the United States with
little trouble. Now that the test
ing business has gone elsewhere,
he said, "you have to wonder if
we were all sandbagged."
But it matters little who fooled
whom at this point. Louis Leviti
cus, chief engineer of UNL's lab,
says t he lab could be out of busi
ness soon unless the Commerce
Department starts to act. Trac
tor manufacturers have little
reason to support making UNL
the official test center if they
can save thouands of dollars by
testing overseas. So don't hold
your breath. 2 '
Although lab officials are
looking for alternative business,
there seems to be little anyone
can do to bring business at
UNL's tractor testing lab back to
its former levels. At a time when
UNL needs all the income it can
get, it's a shame that all that
money and prestige has gotten
away.
eport makes sense
Education needed in AIDS battle
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C.
Everett Koop counseled well
in releasing a recent report
on AIDS. The gist of the report is
that more education is needed to
help control the burgeoning
problem.
And burgeoning it is. Koop
estimated that upwards of 180,000
people will die from the disease
in five years. That's up from the
current figure of 15,000. Conser
vative estimates indicate that
1.5 million people are infected
with the virus and are able to
spread it.
Because there is no cure or
vaccine in sight, prevention is
currently the only method of
fighting the advance of the dis
ease. And prevention is where
Koop focused his remarks.
Experts are virtually unanim
ous in agreeing that casual, non
sexual contact will not spread
the disease. A growing number of
heterosexuals join intravenous
drug users and homosexuals as
the disease's victims. The sexual
link is the most significant.
In educating adults Koop
counseled care in choosing sex
partners and said, "Couples who
engage in freewheeling casual
sex these days are playing a dan
gerous game." Koop rightly urged
people to know and talk with sex
partners and potential sex partners.
The second major emphasis of
the report is geared toward edu
cating children. He urged educa
tion beginning as early as the
third grade. The thrust of the
education would be to encour
age "open discussions about
sexual practices" and begin to
educate children to "avoid be
haviors that can lead to expo
sure to the AIDS virus."
That claim is somewhat sur
prising, coming from an admin
stration as well known for its
cultural conservatism as for its
economic conservatism.
Koop's urging is as far as the
U.S. public can go today. The
responsibility for sexual behav
ior lies squarely upon the pub
lic's shoulder, and increased
education is one way of effec
tively discharging this respons
ibility. Editorial Policy
The Daily Nebraskan's pub
lishers are the regents, who
established the UNL Publications
Board to supervise the daily pro
duction of the paper.
According to policy set by the
regents, responsibility for the
editorial content of the news
paper lies solely in the hands of
its student editors.
Tike romance of poverty
To leave it all behind and go in quest of pink flamingos
In the most sordid areas of our cit
ies, there is a class of people we
always try to avoid. We try to avoid
them because they represent every
thing we're not supposed to be in a
capitalist society: apathetic, penniless,
dirty, drunk and devoid of ambition.
I'm talking about those romantic
creat ures of "urban blight," the photo
journalist's favorite subjects and the
bleeding-heart liberal's walking para
digms of pathetic "human waste" and
pity.
Bums and bag ladies.
The myth of the street person and
the hobo has fascinated us for centur
ies.. To the ambitious, they are exam
ples of what one will turn out to be if
one doesn't work or get an education.
But many of us secretly admire those
tattered street urchins and drifters we
are taught to hold in high contempt, for
they represent the romantic wanderer
we would all like to be.
In the drone of daily life, filled with
obligatory school, work and responsi
bilities, we often wonder what it would
be like to just drop everything and
pursue a life of carefree travel and pov
erty. Sometimes it looks so easy . . .
and tempting. Quit your job, wear
trashy clothes and wander the streets,
asking sympathetic businessmen for a
spare dollar or cigarette.
And if you were to get cold and
hungry, you could just amble into the
nearest city mission and ask the bene
volent social workers to feed you and
save your soul.
But we know there's much more to
such a lifestyle. We would become
social travesties, stared at, laughed at
and pitied by society. Maybe a kind,
caring photojournalist would come to
our part of town and snap our picture,
thinking of us as perfect examples of
,1 7 Scott
narrah
"moving human turmoil" that an editor
would love to lay out in a magazine or
newspaper article about urban blight."
Literature always has been the ulti
mate poetic forum for bums, bag ladies
and drifters. Beat legend William S.
Burroughs is the archetypical literary
derelict. Burroughs plays the role of a
cavalier wandering heroin addict who
roams through the steamy regions of
Mexico City and Tangiers writing about
a life full of cheap sex, drugs and
drifting.
Perhaps the most respectable, gla
morous form of drifting is being a
wandering expatriate artist a la Hem
ingway, Fitzgerald and Stein, writing
about the doomed, wealthy dregs of
Europe.
The most desired class of bums and
bag ladies is thejet set immortalized in
Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" and a plethora
of Harold Robbins potboilers. Unlike
their street counterparts, jet-setters
have plenty of money. In fact, they have
so much money that they don't need to
be constructive, so they try to think up
creative ways to destroy themselves so
people like Fellini can make movies
about their creative decadence and
"moving human turmoil."
I lived part of my childhood in Seat
tle, the West Coast's mecca for bums
and bag ladies. The locals insist that
Seattle's waterfront district is the orig
inal "Skid Row." In the 1800s, compan
ies purportedly used to slide all the
fine Northwestern lumber down the
steep hills of the city to the piers on the
bay, where cargo ships would load all
the wood. The area became known as
"Skid Row" because of this process;
and it was also a notorious haven for
unemployed sailors, wayward Alaskans,
prostitutes and the scum of society.
Today, the area is a tourist venue, but
the street people still abound there.
They stand around the gentrificated
bars, boutiques and gift shops and
open air markets, moving through the
salty air that reeks of the bay and all
the pungent salmon canneries that dot
the pier. If you wait around, you can see
a Midwestern tourist snap their picture.
"Get the camera!" the tacky routists
squeal. "It's urban blight!"
Harrah is a UNL junior English and
speech communication major and the
Daily Nebraskan arts and entertainment
editor.
European allies do an about-face
on desirability of missile reduction
When Secretary of State George
Shultz was told by a reporter in
the hot: hours following the
breakup of the Reykjavik summit that
he looked "tired and disappointed,"
Shultz replied that this was easy to
explain: He looked tired and dis
appointed because he was tired and
disappointed.
But the trouble appears to be with
the nature of Shultz's disappointment.
He seems to be saying that if only the
Soviet Union had been a little more
relaxed about the Strategic Defense
Initiative, for example by accepting
the promise not to deploy for 10 years
and permitting in the meanwhile re
search and moderate testing, why then
all the balance of the agreements
would have been ratified, ushering in
the millennium, or something close to
it. Instead we are discovering, inch by
inch, day by day, that the improvised
arrangements in the hot flushes of the
exchanges between Reagan and Gor
bachev would have been disastrous in
their implications.
When you read reactions to Reykjavik,
bear it in mind that any commentator
abcve the grade of GS-11 needs to
precede any statement about the sum
mit by reciting the obligatory soliloquy
deploring nuclear bombs, beginning
with a denunciation of Hiroshima and
ending with a reference to the likeli
hood of a nuclear winter. So expect
that, sit through it, play tic-tac-toe
until it is done, and then begin to
William F.
Buckley Jr.
ill
listen. Here is what a single day's news
brings in:
David Shipler, in The New York
Times: "Although a senior administra
tion official insisted that Mr. Kohl (the
chancellor of West Germany) supported
the Reagan position on arms reductions,
a spokesman for the chancellor, Fried
helm Ost, was quoted by Reuters as
expressing reservations. According to
the Reuters account, Mr. Ost told
reporters that the West German leader
had soueht assurances that if medium-
range missiles were abolished in
Europe, West Germany would not be
left vulnerable to Soviet short-range
weapons or conventional Warsaw Pact
forces. Before the Reykjavik meeting,
Mr. Kohl had urged that short-range
nuclear weapons be included in the
United States-Soviet discussions on
arms reductions . ... 'The German
government accepts the 50 percent
reduction but thinks the discussions in
Reykjavik for greater reduction could
be a danger for Western Europe,' Mr.
Ost said. In keeping with the posture of
optimism that has been carefully
structured by the Reagan administra
tion to recent days, American officials
sidestepped inquiries on . Mr. Kohl'?
questions and sought to paint a phture
of broad accord."
Bear in mind that Kohl's government
has elections coming up next January
and will confront the Social Democrats
which, although it was their own leader
Helmut Schmidt who originally called
for the installation of theater nuclear
weapons in Europe, now takes the
See BUCKLEY on 5