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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 14, 1986)
9m Weather: Friday, partly sunny, breezy and warmer. High around 40. South wind 15 to 25 mph. Fri day night, partly cloudy with the low in the mid to upper 20s. Sat urday, partly sunny with the high in the lower to mid-40s. NDT takes Manhattan in collection of one-acts Arts &c Entertainment, Page 5 Nee-ball makes debut at the Sports Center Sports, Page 6 T November 14, 1986 E NSSA meeting erupts in argument, hysteria By Michael Hooper Senior Reporter Alter last Saturday's Nebraska State Student Association meeting at Peru State College, students left feeling bit ter, upset and disappointed. One student said that the meeting included hysteria, pandemonium, cry ing and one student's resignation. More than 50 students from UNL, UNO, Peru State, Wayne St-.te and Chadroh State Colleges met for NSSA's 12th Legislative Assembly to come up with a policy platform to support higher education in Nebraska, but hardly any thing got done, said Deb Chapelle, executive director of NSSA. 6 o o o Lies and lows: Cocaine By Use Olsen Staff Reporter Tony lent his car to a friend. A passenger idly opened the glove compartment. About two thousand dollars, mostly in fives and tens, flew out, littering the floor and front seat. The passenger stuffed it back without comment. O 0 0 Tony and his wife were eating dinner. Repeatedly, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. o o o Many nights, Tony returned home from parties, unable to sleep. He told his wife he'd been drinking. But alco hol makes most people tired. o o o Tony and his wife Michele can recreate each deception, each painful moment, and project them like slides on the wall. They lived with lies three years ago, but not any more. The cocaine is gone now. Tony, who police say was once one of the major cocaine suppliers in Lincoln, spent nearly a year in prison and 30 days in treatment to shake off the taint -of the white powder. "People still shut doors to me," he says. "People still don't realize I have changed my life." But he has changed. He has been off alcohol and drugs for three years and now works to help addicts at Lincoln General Hospital's Independence Center. From them, he hears some of his old boasts, his old lies. Today he deals in truth. He explains the reasons behind those puzzling scenes from the past: the money in the glove compartment was payment for a drug delivery that he hid and forgot about. The trips to the bathroom were to sniff cocaine, to prolong the high and avert the drug's devastating crash. He would make excuses or create distrac tion to sniff it almost anywhere, anytime. He often couldn't sleep because he partied with cocaine that stimulated his brain and gave him a false euphoric energy. Tony, Michele and their friend Rick talk freely about the 18 months that NSSA meets once a semester to come up with platform policy to sup port higher education in Nebraska. Members then lobby in the state Legislature. But because little was accomplished Saturday, Chapelle said, NSSA will meet again in January. NSSA passed only one policy, on a 27-23 vote, with all non-UNL students voting against it. It called for NSSA to support and promote voting student members on the NU Board of Regents and the State College Board of Trustees. The students spent much of the time arguing about parliamentary procedure and UNL's policy, said six NSSA members interviewed this week. Meeting ke cocaine ruled their lives, but they fear their honesty could hurt their families. So their names have been changed. Taken together, their stories create a disturbing portrait of a Lincoln family and how it was nearly des troyed by cocaine. Tony, a slender father of two, lived two lives during the 18 months he dealt cocaine. "At the time, it was great," Tony says. "I was making a fool out of my wife, out of society, out of my neigh bors. Nobody knew what I was doing but the people I dealt with. And pretty much, you know, I did get away with it." He supplied seven people with cocaine, who resold to others on a sort of "Tupperware principle." He was a middleman who knew only his supplier and his clients. He didn't want to know any more. When he was arrested, police dogs found eight ounces of cocaine in his house in his dresser drawer, under the carpet on the stairs. Police said it had a street value of more than $200,000. Tony, now 32, calls that figure "bull shit." He says he could have sold the cocaine for $27,000 ($3,400 an ounce) at most. Tony says that when he first started dealing, he thought it would be an easy way to make money. But his profits were next to nothing, because he says he kept more and more cocaine for himself. And his clients mostly addicts couldn't always pay. When he was arrested, he owed his supplier $4,500.. His clients owed him about $20,000. Michele had been living with Tony for more than a year when he started dealing cocaine. The dark-eyed 30-year-old was in love and thought she knew Tony very well. But she didn't know about the cocaine. She did know about the money. Sometimes, a hundred-dollar bill might be just lying on a table. She had her questions. She thought maybe her hus band was dealing marijuana, which she knew he smoked occasionally. But he denied it. Daily -Ji US) (rd University of Nebraska-Lincoln "It was a parliamentary disaster," said Dan Hofmeister, a UNL student and NSSA board member. UNL's 27 delegates, who had the majority in voting power, "knew what they wanted to do and they did it," said Paul Hays, one of 14 UNO delegates and the assembly's parliamentarian. Hays and Pat Herrick, a Peru State delegate, complained of UNL's dele gates' attitudes at the meeting. "It was kind of like, 'well this is what we want to do, and to hell with every thing else.' " Hays said. But Hofmeister said, "we played by the rules. We had the book right there and we did everything by the numbers," 19 nearly destroys Lincoln family "He knew what my feelings were about it. I just didn't approve. I didn't like the idea of him making money like that and enjoying the money that way. If he told me the truth, he knew I would leave," she said. So Tony told Michele he worked for a moneylender, collecting cash payments from borrowers. But he offered no explanation for other bizarre behavior, like the times he couldn't sleep and the times he showed up hours late for dates or family events. "I would notice a strange kind of behavior, but I didn't put it together. When you love that person, you only see what you want to see," Michele says. Tony's lies were his way of hiding an increasing obsession. An addiction that he didn't admit existed even to himself. "All this time I thought I was pretty much in control. I would be very, very careful how much I used. But as soon as I was going down, I would use it. I was high pretty much. There were days I would leave it, but it was better with (cocaine)." Everything had started like a game, but the drug's hold on him kept tight ening until, he says, "It was priority number one, (I) could not let it go." He skipped work to go pick up cocaine deliveries. He would sniff almost anywhere to get high or stay high. The guilt became a burden that led to a self-destructive cycle. "You felt like kicking yourself, but you could only kick so hard," he says. "So you would go home and do it again." Tony introduced his friend Rick to the drug. The two would go to parties on nights when Michele was at work. Tony had a lot of friends to party with friends who liked him just because he had cocaine, he now realizes. Rick, who also was arrested and later went through treatment, says those parties consisted of "doing lines" and talking about philosophy, religion or politics. "I remember everybody would be so high and there we were talking like geniuses. Everybody felt like geniuses . . . But if we would have taped some of MKTLmC V V V I V. Mike McMorrow, a student delegate from Wayne State, said UNL delegates used their voting power to end discus sion, even though more students wanted to speak. Then they "pushed it (the policy) through," he said. McMorrow, Hays and Herrick all said they disagreed with a student-regent vote because students lack necessary experience to vote at regents and trus tees meetings. "I don't think we've done our home work enough to have voting members," Herrick said. McMorrow called supporting a student-regent vote "an unrealistic goal." NSSA needs ralistic goals to m ipeirsdDim our conversations it would have been ridiculous. It probably didn't make any sense at all." Three or four people would gather in a house and do about four grams in seven or eight hours. Other times Tony and Rick would go on 48-hour binges. Cocaine triggers the release of dopamine and other neurochemicals in the brain, which convey signals of plea sure. Someone who's high on cocaine will have every muscle tensed, his eyes will be wide and staring. Sleep, food and sometimes sex have little appeal. "Ii t becomes your girlfriend, your lover, your best friend, your god. It becomes your god and later it becomes your hell," Rick said. The cocaine crash produces bouts of depression, fatigue and muscle sore ness. Many regular users drink alcohol to counterbalance the high. Coming down from cocaine, Rick says, is like "meeting hell, in person." -4- ' . itit 5 . - ' u,tl?, : m ;(lfi;t: tiV it. vmv..:.;;.; Vol.86 No.59 show other students that it can get things done, he said. The UNL delegates' policy says tnat a student-regent vote will enhance communication among students, faculty, administrators and decision-makers. Hays said he was disappointed by the way the meeting turned out. "I really feel sorry for the two girls from Chadron State," Hays said. "They came all that way, and it was just a waste of time." Yet all five students interviewed said they would attend the special ses sion in January. "We need to get out act together before we approach the Unicameral," Herrick said. 9 Michele met her own kind of hell one afternoon in 1983 when Tony was giving her a ride to her class at UNL. "I see him looking in the (rear-view) mirror, kind of nervous. And I asked, 'What's happening?' And he said, 'The police are going to stop us.' I though it was maybe a speeding ticket. "And then all these cars pull around and people came and asked us to get out." The policemen, mostly plainclothes men, searched the van and went through Michele's purse. "I was surprised and scared," she says, "and I think at that moment ever ything kind of fit together." But as the pieces fit together in her mind, her world seemed to fall apart. She had to go to jail for a few hours and was questioned about everything from Tony's behavior to the reasons for a recent family vacation in Colorado. See COCAINE on 3 . ( &tG'rh.Lx:l :. ti.-ltt t id i, la A ' ::.!....tir.et!i !i.f.:'!i Ir r!. - i A3 a: fctLin&Lvr.Jt !: ' .... .r-': . x t. A.-,. ... .....r y,.::V. 1 I mm: . . , . . i 2 3;.' ;r r mi: & . i:::::M:..:', :j:.i:::.:st. ':V' 1 t r ' t;.:. ; I " 't-7 i t...;l r