Wednesday, December 3, 1986
Page 4
TC
no- o
Nebrayskan
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Snowball figMs
Annual tradition troublesome
Every year after the first leg
itimate snowfall, the Daily
Nebraskan is forced into
writing an editorial condemning
the student population for the
childish traditional snowball
fight. This year is no different.
Greeks vs. residence halls.
The winners. . . there are none.
The losers ... the university as
a whole. An event like this does
more damage than one can really
see. Last year the Daily Nebras
kan noted in an editorial that
situations like this damage the
image of the university. When
legislators look at a university
that needs budget cutting, what
do they see? Five to six hundred
of this great institution's stu
dent population causing damage
to university property and to
each other. Not good, especially
in light of Gov. Bob Kerrey's cal
Praising a
Boatman an
Sara Boatman, director of
Campus Activities and Pro
grams, is a credit to UNL.
In a time when the university
is losing faculty members and
administrators because of the
never-ending budget cuts, it's
refreshing to see someone with
Boatman's credentials enjoying
her job.
She is nationally known for
her excellence. In 1983-84, she
was elected chairwoman of the
board of directors of t he National
Association of Campus Activities,
which represents more than 1,000
'Good-news' unrealistic
Up-to-date and accurate figures needed
A "good-news" account of Dun
& Bradstreet Corp.'s report
of 1985 business failures
would begin, "Nebraska ranked
50th in the country in 1985 for
avoiding growth in business fail
ures." Of course, everyone can
tell that really means trouble. In
fact, business failures in Nebra
ska rose from 106 in 1984 to 485
in 1985 a growth of a whopping
357.5 percent.
By any accounting, that's bad
news and Steve Williams, a
research analyst for the Nebraska
Department of Economic Develop
ment, says the pace of business
failures probably hasn't abated.
But Williams pointed out that
the report raises more questions
than it. answers about what Ne
braska's business climate is to
day. The unanswered questions
suggest we shouldn't panic just
yet.
Problem No. 1 is that the Dun
& Bradstreet report is a piece of
history. Since 1986 is almost
gone, the report already is almost
a year out of date. A more authori
tative analysis for today would
look at business failures in the
Jeff Korbelik, Editor, 472,1766
James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor
Gene Gentrup, Managing Editor
Tammy Kaup, Associate News Editor
Todd von Kampen, Editorial Page Assistant
ling a special session to look at
more cuts in the state budget,
possibly including the university.
After all was said and done:
O Delta Upsilon suffered six
broken windows and $1,650 in
total damages.
Sellect and Neihardt resi
dence halls suffered $220 to $250
damage. The money will come
from the halls' residents.
O Six to eight people suf
fered facial cuts and scrapes.
One student was bitten by
another.
O The safety of drivers along
Vine, 16th and R streets was
endangered.
Is property damage, personal
injury and a tarnished image
worth a few hours of fun? Not
really. Maturity levels seem to
lower at this time of year, and it
really is too bad.
good sailor
asset to UNL
different colleges and univer
sities. NACA even created a "Sara
Boatman Award for Outstanding
Volunteerism," which she pre
sented in 1984 and 1986.
Her job is the students.
Boatman says the best thing
she can do for her students is to
further develop the talents they
have and to discover and develop
talents they don't know they
possess.
Sara Boatman is a teacher, a
leader and a motivator. Keep up
the good work.
first 11 months of 1986. But
officials of the U.S. Bankruptcy
Court in Omaha, the final source
of the Dun figures, say they don't
have 1986 figures showing how
many businesses have failed this
year.
Second, the figures don't re
flect the total number of business
closings last year; the numbers
reflect only "business in court
proceedings or voluntary actions
involving losses to creditors."
Finally, Williams says, Nebraska's
small size and "smaller universe
of businesses" distorts the
change in percentage from one
year to the next.
Another Dun & Bradstreet
analysis, measuring business
failure rates per 10,000 bus
inesses, puts Nebraska 24th
among the 50 states. That's prob
ably the better figure. No one
wants to. support Nebraska's
economic troubles are merely
imagined, but it doesn't help
recovery efforts to trumpet cries
of doom over a report that may
not reflect today's reality. Let's
stick to numbers that are accur
ate and up-to-date.
'Bint loney liiiicolm!
TTATT rtwcitswe hniio
.... . .
You know those publicity piugs
that colleges run during halftime
of televised football games? Well,
I saw a very interesting one produced
b " the U K t o "Pittsburgh a few
?L, ?fA tISL '
S,o uVi d Tf
vimi .miH siiwiu thi umM jinvnne thini
" v . . . . ....
!.. n: , ..!... .......1.1 i lin'l"
Then, while the student described
some landmark, they would show highly
professional footage of it, designed to
entice and allure you into a college
career in Pennsylvania.
Well, I must say I was surprised that
one of the great eastern independents
would have to stoop to such shenani
gans when trying to attract students. I
thought those schools still had the
kind of stuff that made them naturally
attractive
like promises of good
prospects for gainful
education and prospects for gainful
employment.
However, it struck me that such
institutions as our own, which have
long since given up on the idea of
building a school worth attending for
its own sake, could really benefit from
an advertising campaign that empha
sized the physical comeliness of our
quaint little campus. So I took my own
informal poll and asked students at
random, "If you could show the world
anything on the UNL campus, what
would it be?" Here are some of the
more intriguing selections.
The Mysterious Oldfather Cor
ridor Wind Tunnel. Have you ever
tried to walk between Bessey or Burnett
and Oldfather on any given day? It's
not the place for toupees, looseleaf
notebooks or full skirts. There are some
benefits, however. I hear Boyd Epley
allows repetitions of closing the Old-
America descends into
Send the law breakers
What started as a mistake and
grew into a fiasco has now
become a scandal. Bad enough
that the arms-for-hostage idea became
a series of secret and futile arms
shipments to Iran that undermined
anti-terrorism policy, Persian-Golf neu
trality and Reagan credibility. It now
turns out, sensationally, that it was a
conduit for illegal funding to the
Nicaraguan contras, too.
We are about to descend into North
gate, months of endless questions about
every detail of the tunneling operation
run, apparently, by Lt. Col. Oliver North
at the National Security Council. North
gate, beginning last Tuesday noon,
marks the real end of the first Reagan
administration (proponents of the six
year presidency have gotten their wish)
and the beginning of the second. In the
split second between them, a prefatory
note on the distinction between persons
and policy.
It is difficult to separate the two.
That is why when a policy fails, its
architects must go too. That is why it
was so important for John Poindexter
to resign, albeit two weeks later. Iran
policy failed, and the people go with it.
On Nicaragua, the opposite may very
well happen: The people failed
disastrously, illegally, perhaps felon
iously and they may take the policy
with them.
Judging individuals is important and
no doubt will be the focus of the
coming months of hearings. (One re
porter already asked Ed Meese during
his White House news conference
whether a grand jury presumably to
inquire into sending North to jail
had been convened.) But just as the
national interest was subordinated to
individuals in the swap of arms for
hostages, national interest may be
subordinated to individuals in the hunt
for the arms-swap malefactors. History
hardly remembers the names of Ser
gretti and Colson, nor cares about the
fate of Halderman and Ehrlichman. It
does remember and records in the
successive national defeats America
suffered post-Watergate the con
sequences of the fall of an administra
11111111 'wonders of the world to versi
j oo niiidihitP for mnrp
wim-i uuws . --
conventional bicep and tncep training,
The Military and Naval Sci-
ence Building and its Pershing
Rifles Memorial. In Nebraska, we
lit, tn emphasize our native heroes:
WHliam Jennings Bryan, Willa Cather,
Johiinv ('arson aiu
lom orCKaw. DUl
. . . .... A 4U..11 finn-.
none is more reveieu man mc wuimu
r
James
Sennett
s
2L.
of the UNL military science school,
Gen. John J. "Blackjack" Pershing,
don't know, though. Can you imagir
don't know, though, ( an you imagine
living your life in such a way that, when
you died, the way your country thought
it could most honor your memory was
by naming a medium-range nuclear
warhead after you?
Memorial Stadium: Temple to
the Great God Big Red. 1 must
admit that, on my first tour of this
campus, this was the thing that im
pressed me the most. I like what Brian
Bosworth said: When you go inside
there, you know you are someplace
special.
I have been a college-foot ball fanatic
all my life. When I first found out we
were moving to Lincoln, I just sat on my
Indiana couch, stared into space and
whispered, ''Wow! Lincoln, Nebraska!"
My wife asked, "What's so special
about Lincoln, Nebraska?" But all I
could do was stare right, through her
and say, "But honey, it's Lincoln. Ne-
tion.
It is quite likely that an immediate
casualty of the North affair will be the
cutting off of the contras. If such a
policy follows from a national debate
on the merits of armed resistance to
the Sandinistas, that is one thing. If it
follows from anger at the deception of a
particular administration (or of a rogue
varies j;
Krauthammt
elephant within it) and a desire to
punish the President for his men's
circumvention of congressional will,
that is another thing and a historic
mistake.
It may happen. Less than three
hours after Ed Meese's announcement
of the secret funding channel to the
contras, Sen. David Durenberger said,
"It's going to be a cold day in Washing
ton, D.C., before any more money goes
into Nicaragua." Should the United
States really decide whether to abide a
Soviet satellite on the American main
land on the basis of whether Oliver
North acted illegally.
Everyone knew that the contras were
living off something during the two
years that Congress had cut them off.
Most presumed that they were getting
help from friendly third countries with
a shared anti-communist interest and
many debts owned to the United States.
Countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia,
Taiwan. Had checks simply been issued
by the governments or the secret ser
vices of these countries, it would have
been no big deal.
It is a big deal that the money came
from profits from the Iran arms-for-hostages
swap. It shows a deep dis
respect for the law by the Americans
involved. It shows an abject and un
healthy willingness to please American
representatives on the part of the
Israelis involved. It shows all involved
fa )
9
to persue
braska!" The uninitiated rnuM
v.
understa nd.
. Jh
this building has won lots of awards
from people who give out awards to
buildings. I guess there's a lot to be
said for a construction that size that
iiaaiiumHU-camcnuiuuours. lwonuer
if any of those awards had to do with
having more corners per square foot.
than any building needs or deserves?
The Selleck Quadrangle Base
ment. That's a scary place down there.
I have had nightmares about going
down to the M I LI I lab, getting lost and
never being heard from again. I wonder
if Selleck SAs are especially trained in
search-and-rescue procedures. While
we're on the subject, does anyone have
the slightest idea why a building that
has six sections and is shaped like a
backwards "J" is called a "Quad
rangle"? Well, there were many other worthy
responses. The fourth floor of the Ne
braska Union (talk about spooky), the
Dairy Store (no comment needed), the
Apollo Nosecone (has anyone figured
out just why that thing is there?) and
the Old Coliseum Swimming Hole were
among the nominations that, could not
be elaborated upon due to lack of
All in all, I think we can agree that
we have a pretty funky campus here
and one that is deserving of the
pedestrian gawking it so often receives
from those who visit for the first time.
Like my daddy always said, "Eighteen
hundred screaming fourth-graders can't
be w rong."
Sennett is campus minister with College-Career
Christian Fellowship ami a
graduate student in philosophy.
Northgate:
to jail
to have been too clever by half. But it
does not in any way alter the'funda
mental strategic situation in Central
America. It does not alter the answer to
the question: Ought the United States
support a resistance whose aim is to
turn Nicaragua from a Soviet satellite
into a country friendly to the United
States?
A leading anti-Sandinista intellectual
who has closely watched American
reaction to Nicaragua since the revolu
tion said to me plaintively two years
ago that he feared losing his only
chance to regain his country because of
domestic American politics. To punish
Reagan, Congress will sacrifice Nic
aragua, he said.
He may be right, though premature.
My concern, however, is less for him
than for us. The loss of Nicaragua
would be the most severe geopolitical
defeat (aside from the military defeat
in Vietnam) of the United States since
the integration of Cuba into the Soviet
bloc. Destroy the resistance to punish
Reagan, Sen. Durenberger, and you will
have forfeited a vital and enduring
American interest a Central America
free of Soviet control for sweet
revenge.
It does not matter if the next six
months reveal that Calero or Cruz or
Robelo or even Don Regan knew of any
illegality. Get rid of whomever you
must. Send lawbreakers to jail. But
don't punish the country too.
c 1986, Washington Post Writers Group
Krauthammer is a senior editor for the
New Republic.
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