Pago 4
Friday, January 30, 1987
Daily Nebraskan
A
Daily t
2DrasKan
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
N
Gift ideas reviewed!
Sheldon addition recommended
One sparkling gem in the
rather tarnished crown of
UNL is the Sheldon Art
Gallery. Sheldon is renowned
nationwide for its collection of
20th-century art. No finer use
could be made of the 1987
senior-gift money than to con
tribute to its collection.
This year's senior-gift com
mittee has selected three possi
ble projects funds collected from
the 1987 class could go.
One choice is for the class to
sponsor a portion of the pro
posed North American Indian
display in Morrill Hall. Another
choice is to use the gift to spon
sor "a major room or facility" in
the proposed recreationtraining
center. Finally, the committee
proposes that the gift fund could
be used to purchase "one or
more pieces of art representing
the 1980s."
The Sheldon project is the
superior option.
If the funds for Morrill Hall
were proposed for needed reno
vations rather than for a new
exhibit, this option would be
much more attractive. The cry
Guest Opinion
Rec center unneeded
ASUN senator resigns;
students should not vote
The students and faculty of this
campus are being raped once again by
the athletic-administrative-alumni com
plex, and the ASUN Senate is again
taking part in the crime.
The rec center will owe its existence
to the athletic department in general
and the football team in particular. The
impetus for moving this project for
ward, after all, came from Tom Osborne,
not from ASUN. Since the athletic
department is responsible for the rec
center's being built, just who do you
think will have the final say over who
gets to use it and when? After all, the
Devaney sports center was to be used
by faculty and students. Yet, students
and faculty are barred by the athletic
department from using a taxpayer
paid-for and built-for building. How are
they going to act about a building
which they raised money for? A clue
was in the athletic department letter,
which stated that the facilty would be
used by students when the football
team did not need it.
UNL is last in the Big Eight in
recreation space, and the new rec cen
ter will not change that. Not much
space is being added for the students.
The coliseum will simply be remo
deled. Additionally, the tennis team's
courts will be taken out, leaving thjj
tennis team to use already overcrowded
dorm courts.
But never mind the details. Student
leaders suffer from a country-club atti
tude. Details of the problems which
arise from their messing around will be
worked out by the hired help. Students
become servants. So what if students
pay $20 a semester in fees for a com
plex most of them will not use? As they
like to tell you at ASUN, it costs more
than that to join a health club. It costs
even more for a country club.
Student leaders in general believe
that what is best for them is best for
Jeff Korbelik, Editor, 472-1766
James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor
Lise Olsen, Associate News Editor
Mike Reilley, Night News Editor
Jean Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
ing need of the museum is for the
preservation of the important
artifacts and displays already
being exhibited. While each
anthropological exhibits are
somewhat interesting, little real
significance seems to be advanced
by such exhibits.
The recreation-building fund
already is moving ahead under
its own speed. With the signifi
cant following of Cornhusker
football, that the center will be
built sooner or later is almost a
foregone conclusion.
Sheldon, however, can always
use incremental additions to its
already reputed collection. In
fact, given its special commit
ment to 20th-century art, it can
not maintain the quality of its
collection without such contri
butions. An incremental addi
tion, such as the one proposed by
the senior-gift committee, has
real meaning in this context and
would contribute to the overall
effect of the museum. These fac
tors should combine to provide
the senior-gift committee with a
resounding "yes!" for the Shel
don gift.
everyone. Note the endless work that
has been done in pursuit of getting
night bus service between campuses.
Yet an unreleased poll of more than
1,000 students by ASUN showed that an
overwhelming majority of students would
not use the bus service. But if a couple
of senators need it, by golly, the will of
the majority be damned.
Student government spending so
much time oohing and ahhing over this
new rip-off is equivalent to Nero fid
dling while Rome burned. ASUN is
nothing more than an arm of the
administration, and has been for years.
The president herself once said that
she had an equal responsibility to stu
dents and administrators. Yet who voted
her into office? While the university
burns, students leaders, generally short
on intelligence and long on ambition,
have been passing bylaws and organiz
ing twister events.
Even when pro-student legislation
somehow sneaks through, it gets vetoed
by the president after she has con
sulted administrators as to what she
should do. Is that student leadership or
administrative checks and balances?
Perhaps this is part of the reason so
many senators who do not wish to
defend the powers-that-be have resigned
from ASUN in the last year.
In the spirit of protest, I am joining
those senators who have come to real
ize that student government is a joke,
and ASUN is another cornerstone for
non-representation and hereby an
nounce my resignation from ASUN, I
encourage students not to vote for
anyone in the next election. Your vote,
like student government, is meaning
less and will be ignored by those who
you elect.
Tim Howard
graduate student
political science
Mh comteril is smart sen
Don 'tbe caught by surprise when things
Picture this typical teen: a Reebok
wearer in torn Levi's 501 jeans
holding a tiger Teen Beat in one
hand and a box of Trojans in the other.
Hey, wait, where did that come from?
Actually, that box is probably not in
the scene at all. But it should be.
Because, according to a recent Harris
poll, 60 percent of all teens have had
sex by their 17th birthdays. Yet only
one-third say they use birth control.
OK, we've probably all had our fill of
teen sex and the teen-pregnancy scare.
We've seen the docudramas and docu
mentaries about children with child
ren. We're aware of the problem, but as
college students we're not included in
it.
We're older, smarter, better edu
cated and more sensitive than those
kids.
Or are we?
According to a recent Gallup survey,
nearly 70 percent of college women (for
some reason men weren't included) are
sexually active yet about half admitted
they hadn't been formally educated
about sex. Many believed a variety of
myths about birth control:
Thirty-two percent thought that
withdrawal would prevent pregnancy
and about 25 percent use the rhythm
method they guess when it's safe to
have sex.
Even sillier, nearly 50 percent be
lieved condoms came in different sizes.
(One size fits all.)
And college-age men probably know
even less about birth-control methods
than women do, simply because they
don't use them as often. Men don't have
to worry about getting pregnant.
Tim Moran, community-relations
director for Planned Parenthood of
Lincoln, said the teen poll on sex and
birth-control use reflects some general
and unfortunate truths about society's
ignorance. Birth control isn't thought
of as being automatic it's unroman
tic and intrusive. James Bond doesn't
reach across to the drawer in the night
stand when he's in bed with the gor
geous Russian spy.
Teens have this answer for not using
birth control consistently: "It just hap
pens," they say.
"It just happens," to these' UNL
dents too.
Sfie saw an old boyfriend at a
Silent air of hope for democracy
blowing in from China, Russia
There is a great, mostly unspoken
hope in the air, blowing in from
the east, bearing news from Rus
sia and China. The hope, against hope,
is that we have been wrong about total
itarianism. Perhaps like all other forms
of tyranny, it is mortal. Perhaps, after
all, it may be reversible.
The news, like the hope, has come in
a rush. From Russia, a startling de
parture for socialist-realist journalism:
KrauthamitiL 7
a disaster at sea, a riot and a KGB
abuse have been reported in the Soviet
press. Even more spectacularly, the
names Pasternak and Baryshnikov have
been plucked from official oblivion and
restored to the lexicon of Soviet life.
Glasnost openness is the word.
Meanwhile in China, tens of thou
sands of students have taken to the
streets demanding democracy. They
have not been met with glasnost.
Supreme leader Deng Xiaoping ordered
the demonstratons halted. His Direc
tive No. 1, a classic of velvet-glove
repression, reads: "We can afford to
shed some blood. Just try as much as
possible not to kill anyone." Three
party. He drove her home because
she was too drunk to drive. They
talked; he was leaving town tne
next day. They kissed. Then, you
know, it just happened. Of course,
they didn't use anything. "Why
did he do this to me?" she asks,
knowing it's just as much her
fault as it is his. But he's not the
one waiting to see if he's pregnant
He's a strict Catholic, there are
even priests in the family and
everything. But he's normal.
There have been girlfriends and,
of course, sex. He doesn't carry
anything with him, of course,
and the kind of girls he dates
wouldn't use birth control So
he's taken chances.
She and he shared about three
i 1 :
jfc . t
, '
sk ) Use
Olsen
:"..v-
pitchers a nd then went home and
ended up in bed. No one else was
around except the cat. The cat
didn 't warn her. It just happened
before she knew what was going
on. She had nearly passed out,
but sudden ly she was sober enough
to realize that she was taking a
terrible chance just to have fun
with someone she hardly knew.
0 0 0
He and his high-schxx)l girl
friend did it and didn 't use any
thing. She though she was preg
nant. He thought his life was
over. He wasn 't ready to be mar
ried, but he couldn 't have done
anything else. He would have
been trapped.
0 0 0
Things happen quickly in the
summer. They were close, nearly
engaged. She went on the pill, but
didn't like it. It made her feel
sick. She felt pregnant, sick all
the time. So they used rubbers.
Ttif !UffV ITiTirtki
sruptNitiNSTiynoNS
sour?
leading intellectuals, accused of preach
ing the heresy of "bourgeois liberaliza
tion," were purged from the Commu
nist Party. And Hu Yaobang, the liberal
Party boss most sympathetic to the
students, lost his job.
While Russia basks in glasnost and
plans a Bolshoi welcome for Barysh
nikov (a clever rewrite of the "White
Nights" storyline), China is in the grips
of a crackdown. Soviet intellectuals are
encouraged to speak. Chinese intellec
tuals are warned to hold their tongues.
And yet the only real hope lies in China.
The reason is to be found in some
thing said by one of the three purged
Chinese intellectuals, Fang Lizhi, a
I
rr"-3
just start to happen
Sometimes. But sometimes thm
forgot. She was lucky for a long
time but then it just happened.
She went to a city and had an
abortion. People were picketing
outside the clinic and she had to
walk through the line. During the
operation, shecould seethe shape
of the embryo on a monitor. She
lives with stomachaches and sup
presses memories. So does he.
Some college students are paying
now for mistakes they made when they
were 17. Others will pay in the future
for mistakes they're making now.
Mostly, we've always been most con
cerned about pregnancy. But today the
issue is complicated by a host of other
concerns sexually transmitted dis
eases and AIDS.
When you go to bed with one person,
you go to bed with a sexual history and
the history of all his or her sexual
partners, as one woman said.
The media has been bombarding the
individual with frightening facts and
panicky polls, but actual behavior isn't
reflecting the publicity given to these
very real concerns. There are just too
many other stories like the ones I told.
Publicly, a few sexual taboos are top
pling. A San Francisco TV station
agreed last week to allow condom ads.
In 1985, Atlanta, Ga., made Newsweek
when it allowed condom ads on bill
boards. At a bar in Iowa City, home of the
University of Iowa, the condom machines
have come out of the closets. They've
even made their way into the women's
room.
But all the external changes, all the
information, all the counseling and
condom giveaways won't make much
difference if individuals keep making
foolish choices.
"It just happens" way too often, and
no excuse really sounds good anymore,
especially with birth control readily
available a few blocks away at Planned
Parenthood, the University Health Cen
ter and Osco Drug.
Even if you don't have sex. Or even
plan to, it doesn't hurt anyone to be
prepared. The costs are cheap com
pared to the financial, emotional and
physical risks of unprotected sex.
1
hero of the democracy movement who
was fired from his post at University of
Science and Technology: "Democracy
granted from above is not democracy in
a real sense. It is relaxation of control."
Gorbachev's is a revolution from
above. He is offering to relax control in
order to revive a moribund economy, a
sclerotic society and, most of all, a
demoralized intelligentsia. His goal,
the best that can come out of his
efforts, will be efficiency: a more
agreeable repression, under which
workers and intellectuals will improve
their production.
See KRAUTHAMMER on 5 :
