Thursday, January 29, 1987
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
o o
Nebraskan
University ot Nebraska-Lincoln
Quips and! quote
Union budget
The Committee for Fees Allo
cation's rejection of the Ne
braska Union's 1987-88 bud
get appears to be a waste of time.
CFA rejected the budget because
the union's food service is pro
jecting a loss for the sixth straight
year.
In Wednesday's Daily Nebras
kan, CFA subcommittee members
Paul Reynolds and Dave Fiske
said that by rejecting the budget
they are telling the union that it
must make positive steps to
alleviate the food services deficit.
CFA chairman Rob Mellion said
the Union Board must rework the
budget and resubmit it for ap
proval. He said the budget will
be nearly the same as the one
rejected, but said he hopes the
rejection will encourage Union
Director Daryl Swanson to change
the way the food service is run.
, Why waste the time of CFA
and Union Board by resubmitting
a budget? It's common knowl
edge that the union is looking
into a franchise, a probable
money-maker, to replace Union
Square. Union Square is not the
But the president looks healthy
The man who caused the
textbooks to rewrite their
sections on presidential
power seems to have gone flat,
legislatively speaking. Tuesday
evening's State of the Union
address contained little energy
that can be translated into pol
icy initiative.
While President Reagan again
proved himself to be the Great
Communicator and dispelled
concerns respecting his physical
vigor his speech mainly re
peated concerns already discuss
ed during the last six years. Rea
gan seemed almost resigned to
the status of a lame duck for the
last two years of his term.
Last fall's double punch of
Iranamok and the Senate loss
has quite obviously left the
Letter
Nursing student
I would like to address NU President
Ronald Roskens' recommendation to
the NU Board of Regents to cut the
UNMC's College of Nursing-Lincoln Ex
tension. As a student of that program I
could testify to its value and quality. I
could also quote statistics to show how
needed the program is. Students in any
program recommended for elimination
would do this to fight to preserve what
they consider valuable. I am no differ
ent. I will fight now as I did with my
fellow students and faculty two years
ago when our program was targeted for
elimination.
Justifying the continued existence
of the Lincoln nursing program with
such comments as the shortage of pro
fessional nurses, offering a campus life
for students, and serving atypical stu
dents in the Lincoln area seems to be
repetitive. I therefore would like to
address another aspect of this situa
tion, the true purpose of the university.
Was not the University of Nebraska
established to provide citizens of the
Jeff Korlu'lik, Mi tor, 472-1766
James Rogers, Editorial Paye Editor
Use Olson, Associate News Editor
Mike Reilley, Niylit News Editor
Jean Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
s
should stand
problem; it has broken even in
the past. The Harvest Room is
the major loser. The addition of
the franchise would help reduce
the total food-service deficit. It
appears, then, that the union is
making an effort to alleviate the
shortfalls. The unions seem to be
fighting budgetary red tape.
O Last semester the Daily
Nebraska noted students' prob
lem with university and city par
king meters. The situation seems
to have worsened. Students com
plain that timing mechanisms
are faulty, not giving as much
time as they have paid for. Also,
numerous meters are broken.
The I)N urges the UNL and Lin
coln police to fix the broken
meters.
O Wednesday the AIM party
announced its candidacy for ASUN
elections on March 1 1. The party
is the first of several serious and
joke parties to appear on the
scene. The DN would like to
encourage students to listen to
the serious parties; they -will
bring to light issues important to
this campus.
ss lacks energy
administration groping to move
off the stable equilibrium off
dead center.
One subject touched upon by
the president deserves some
attention: He proposed to in
crease funding of basic research
to help keep the American econ
omy competitive in international
markets. As with Gov. Kay Orr's
emphasis on research, President
Reagan's proposal deserves quick
implementation. Not only will
the benefits be direct in terms of
the economy, but research funds
aid universities (the institutions
that do most of the basic re
search): it will thus ease some of
the financial crunch being widely
experienced and facilitate im
provement in the quality of post
secondary institutions.
shows support
state with academic programs? With
the current situation, one would not
consider this to be so. The integrity of
the university must be maintained to
educate and train the state's future
leaders in all academic areas. I con
sider every program at the university
valuable, and none vulnerable to cuts,
as long as they continue to serve the
state's needs.
If the Lincoln nursing program is
cut, it would be a great loss to the
students and faculty, to the nursing
profession in this state and to the citi
zens of this state.
For the students in other programs
who are now saying, "I'm glad it wasn't
my program," just remember there is
always next year. As long as the univer
sity's budget continues to be cut, aca
demic programs will continue to be
targeted.
Lori Fritz
Fourth-year nursing student
UNMC College of Nursing-Lincoln
Modernity fails collective test
Philosophy neglecting
. rr odernity is not a time, but a
i collection of ideas, ideas that
.YX mav be adopted (wittingly or
not) or argued with. Anthony Arblaster
correctly observes that the "metaphys
ical (i.e., theory of reality) and the
ontological (i.e., theory of being) core"
of modernity is individualism. Thomas
Fleming, editor of "Chronicles," sum
marized the fundamental propositions
of modernity in a recent review of Arb
iter's book: "the distinction between
fact and value, the isolation of human
beings from each other (privacy), the
use of individual experience as a moral
touchstone, faith in science, self-possession
(the pervasive notion of owner
ship extended to one's person) and the
sovereignty of desires and appetites."
The story of the modern era is the
tale of alienation, despair and their
bastard offspring, brutality. Contempt
for the humane boundaries of the cul
tural congregation has foisted human
ity into a social dilemma. A dilemma
that, if resolved toward either prong,
embraces death.
Writing in Kill), the poet John Donne
understood t he abiect loneliness that
thft era of the idea of the man-end
would foist upon its participants:
" 'Tis all in pieces, all cohaerence
gone;
All just supply, and all Relation:
Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, all
things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath
got
To be a Phoenix, and that then can
bee
None of that kinde, of which he is,
but hee."
The task of the man-god reached its
popular exposition in J.S. Mill's "On
Liberty." Mill's individualistic argu
ments are today blandly asserted as the
most obvious of truths. (Though today
even Mill's belief in truth itself is
railed against as being "intolerant,"
ostensibly by those who seek only to
extend his notions of tolerance.) "No
constraint" is the slogan to which
Mental Rolodex of sexual partners
breeds new social responsibility
This is how it comes into con
sciousness: A statistic is printed in the
daily paper. The number of heterosex
ually transmitted AIDS cases has in
creased by 200 percent in the past year.
A secret blood test is taken of
women applying for marriage licenses
in Alameda County, Calif. Out of 2,000
women, 0.5 percent of them have been
exposed to the virus.
An NBC special features AIDS vic
tims. Several of them are from "the
general population."
A cover stoiy is published in The
Atlantic about heterosexuals and AIDS.
The subtitle is: "the second stage of
the epidemic."
One after the other, alarm bells go
off in an ever-large portion of the public
mind. Millions of "straight" Americans
turn the mental Rolodex of their sexual
partners two or 200 and wonder if
one of them carried a virus into bed.
"When you go to bed with one man,"
says a single woman who is far from
promiscuous, "you go to bed with his
entire sexual history and the history of
all his sexual partners." Says another,
"I have worried about getting AIDS,
but I suppose, incredible as it sounds, I
could also worry about giving it."
The AIDS epidemic has entered the
worry system, the 4-o'clock-in-the-morn-ing
concerns. If we do not worry for
ourselves, it's for our friends, family,
children. Many now routinely pour over
scare stories and search for antidotes
to anxiety in the progress reports from
the medical world.
Nevertheless, it is remarkable how
little actual behavior has changed. In
The Atlantic Katie Leishman writes,
"AIDS may provide the ultimate test of
strategies for behavior modification."
But she reports on partners of AIDS
patients who go on having sex and
social bonds wauow
modernity's "popular opinion" attends, called by (French sociologist Emile)
Yet the despised bonds of the con- Durkheim 'egoism, which also leads in
grcgation are the only bounds that give extreme cases to suicide. . . . The indi
meaningtothegoalsofhumanlife.Ina vidual is launched upon an infinite
seminal essay, University of Massachu- expanse, condemned to seek a security
setts philosopher Robert Wolff ironi- which must always pass away in death
cally observes that the will to self- and to project meaning into a meaning
destruction occurs precisely upon the less void."
consistent realization of two condi- Freedom only makes sense within a
tions that Mill would term parts ot congregational context not an indi-
"liberty." idualistic one. For example, University
of Chicago philosopher Allan Bloom is
7-. .i correct in asserting, as he did in a
Jim
Rogers
V V 1
The first condition occurs with "the
loosening of the constraints of tradi
tional and group values." Suicide is the
result, since "there is no intrinsic limit
to the quantity of satisfaction which
the self can seek, it finds itself drawn
into an endless and frustrating pursuit
of pleasure. The infinitude ol the objec-
the universe is unconstrained for the
individual within social or subjective
limits, and the self is simply dissipated
in the vacuum which it strives to fill."
Anomism or lawlessness is the
personal abyss which swallows the per
sonality given such "freedom" from the
warm, enfolding domain of the congre
gation. Consistent anomie is nihilism.
Yet while always asserting the presup
positions of this nihilism, the modern
era insanely denies the reality of the
abyss. And so the human lemmings
flock to the sea of nihilism, apparently
not aware that they are cast adrift in an
ocean of death.
The other condition is also a mani
festation of "freedom" from congrega
tional bonds and the lively intimacy
they entail. Wolff writes, "Freedom
from the const ricting bonds of an inti
mate social involvement brings with it
a second form of psychic derangement,
without condoms, on gay men who cut
back but do not cut out unprotected
sex, and on people who shield them
selves with intuition: "I would intuit if
someone had something as degenera
tive as the AIDS virus."
This sluggishness that Leishman de
scribes so matter-of-factly, this diffi
culty in changing private behavior, is
linked inexorably to the difficulty of
changing public behavior. We have, as
yet, no mass program for education or
safety.
Last week, Surgeon General C. Eve
rett Koop said how troubled he was by
conservative attacks on his endorse
ment of AIDS education in the schools.
Many in the religious right suspect that
AIDS is a front for sneaking sex educa
tion into classrooms.
Ellen LrV
Goodman!
On the other side, old-guard sexual
libertarians like Gay Talese brush off
the risk to heterosexuals. They suspect
that the AIDS scare is a right-wing tool
for jolting people back into Victorian
morality.
The debate about condoms, that
imperfect but important device for pro
tection, seems equally rutted in old
arguments. A major San Francisco TV
station agreed last week to allow con
dom ads. But the network still refuses
to air ads for products that might con
trol disease because they also control
birth.
Many continue to focus on sexual
morality instead of the deadly amoral-
tu wij-uaiuiyvnce
speech broadcast on PBS several years
ago, that the goal of free speech is
obtained only when there is a truth
that can be debated; i.e., only if abso
lutes exist is the nature of truth a
subject of concern. If the foundation of
our tolerance is that nothing is true,
then there is no reason to speak. After
all, if one person's "truth' is as valid as
the one you hold, there's no reason to
engage in any persuasive attempt. This
nihilistic foundation of "free speech"
results (by the consistent believer)
only in an oppressively silent world.
The West has backed away from the
destructive abyss of economic laissez
faire (which it approached during the
19th century). The search for the pres
ervation of personality in the economy
continued today. (Though increasing
statism of the West, although an under
standable reaction to the extremity of
the 19th century situation, is scarcely
more humane than the system it re
placed and is, at times, much worse.
As with economic laissez faire, so
too today, the dehumanization of our
cultural laissez faire invites responses.
The conservative world view, as George
Will aptly noted, has a warm spot in its
heart for the notion of organic com
munity. Personality and life are nur
tured only given the recognit ion of the
import of the cultural congregation.
Rogers is an economics graduate, law
student and Daily Nebraskan editorial
page editor.
ity of a virus. We have not yet made a
crucial shift in our priorities, putting
health first.
In high schools, dispensing condoms
remains controversial. In Las Vegas,
when they talked of testing prostitutes,
the chief of the vice squad protested:
"We're just making it easier for these
men." In cities where AIDS is passed
from one intravenous-drug user to
another and to the rest of the popula
tion, officials are still querulous about
easy access to needles.
There are some who offer a one-word
answer to this epidemic: no. Say no to
unwed sex. Say no to prostitution. Say
no to drugs. But is this to be our sole
national-health program: "Say No or
Die"? And how do we protect people
from those who said "yes"?
To date, 30,000 Americans have been
stricken by AIDS, 1,200 of them hetero
sexuals. We have no idea how many
carry the virus. As not if "but as
AIDS spreads through the population,
"no" will become a much more com
mon answer to sex. Testing may become
routine, and so will the demand for
every kind of protection from educa
tion to condoms to clean syringes. But
how many more will die before our
behavior, public as well as private, is
"modified"?
As the stories and statistics pile up,
I wonder about our difficulty in treat
ing AIDS as a medical menace. In this
biological battle, we are peculiarly
enough up against a virus that moves
much faster, adapts more agilely and
seems tragically more open to change
than the human beings it threatens.
1987, The Boston Globe Newspaper
CompanyWashington
Post Writers Group
Goodman is a Pulitzer prize-winning
columnist for the Boston Globe,