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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."
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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
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