Pago 4
Monday, February 9, 1987
Daily Nebraskan
Tirana!
V
Jeff Korbelik, Editor, 472-1766
James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor
Lise Olsen, Assxiate News Editor
Mike Reilley, Night News Editor
Jean Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
University ol Nebraska-Lincoln
rafff Mir
Fimdraising su
Departments
The small but growing num
bers of declarations of finan
cial independence are en
couraging to see, and in the long
run will boost the university's
search to re-establish a quality
school.
Recently the UNL College of
Journalism voted to begin a major
push toward developing its own
sources of support so that the
college need not cut back due to
financial constraints. In other
action, organizations supporting
the renovat ion of Morrill Hall got
together on Feb. : to coordinate
lobbying efforts on legislation
that would fund preservation of
the museum.
These signs of independent
financial life bode well for the
future if maintained and ex
panded. First, it shows that there's
still some spunk left in the uni
versity's staff. NU administrators
are forced by the respective posi
tions to aggregate all university
interests and, as a result, can
never be, in fairness to other
programs, really zealous about
any programs.
In contrast, staff members need
not temper their zeal for their
programs by such considerations.
Consequently, the strongest ar
guments in favor of funa'g are
guaranteed to be presented to
the public through independent
attempts at funding.
Miranda under assault
by Justice Department
It is disgraceful that just after a
parade of ex-Reagan aides piously
invoke the Filth Amendment,
Reagan's attorney general is preparing
an assault on the Miranda rules.
It is a disgrace because Miranda is
quite properly known as the poor man's
Filth. Oliver North and Claus von
Charles
Krauthammu
Bulow and Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno
do not need Miranda. They know
they have the right to remain silent, the
right to counsel, etc. They do not need
to be warned that what they say may be
used against them. It is the indigent
and the ignorant who need the Miranda
warnings. Ed Meese is promising a
crusade to see that they no longer get
them.
The basis of assault is a Justice
Department staff report completed last
February, just released, and soon to be
shaped into a major law-review article.
The report does not flinch from the
issue: "While as suspect might believe
that he is under a legal obligation to
respond to incriminating questions if
not told otherwise, it is not apparent
why the government should go out of its
way to disabuse him of that notion."
"It is not apparent" is a preface you
use when you disbelieve something but
cannot explain why, when you want a
bias to pose as an argument. It is not
apparent to Justice, you see, that the
poor should be enabled to exercise
rights that the rich exercise as a
V. A
sported
begin self-help
It would actually be great to
see more movement toward the
development of private lines of
support for specific departments
and programs. All in all, department-specific
searches for pri
vate donations may be more suc
cessful than the aggregated sear
ches done by the administration
and the NU Foundation. This
claim is founded in the way peo
ple think. It's one thing to be
asked to give money "to the uni
versity." It's quite another thing
to, be asked to save a specific
program, chair or exhibit.
Perhaps working t hrough the
central administration and at
tempting to make people relate
to the "best interests" of the
entire system is the wrong way to
motivate support. Perhaps there's
something akin to Adam Smith's
"invisible hand" principle in the
process of seeking funds for the
university: Through each depart
ment's seeking to advance its
own interests, the welfare of the
whole, though not directly inten
ded, is promoted.
At any rate, such actions should
not be discouraged, but encour
aged. It should be made quite ;
clear that the school supports
attempts by beleaguered depart
ments and programs to raise
money and mitigate or reverse
the effect of cuts. Self-help can
become a fact of life at UNL, but
it takes initiative and spunk.
matter of routine. It is not apparent to
Justice that there are class differences
in America, and that government should
do something to ensure that they do
not result in differential justice.
We revisit, then, the general Reagan
philosophy that the disadvantaged
deserve no special assistance to secure
their rights. This administration will
not tolerate discrimination: Ernesto
Miranda, a penniless, barely literate
immigrant, had the same right to call
his lawyer as Ivan Boesky did.
Argues the Justice report, "It is not
unfair to obtain and use a suspect's
statements to convict him for a crime
that he has in fact committed, just
because more knowledgeable criminals
are better able to exploit the rules of
law to defeat justice." But wait. First of
all, at the time the Miranda warnings
are given, we don't yet know that the
suspect is guilty. And second, what
Justice calls "exploiting the rules of
law" is what other people call invoking
the right against self-incrimination, a
privilege Englishmen and their cousins
have been exploiting for over three
centuries. Justice's line of argument
betrays not just unconcern for the poor
but contempt for the Fifth.
As does the somewhat ironic solu
tion the report offers to bleeding hearts
who worry about fairness: "Concerns
over equity of this sort might be met
equally well by holding that no one has
a right to counsel in custodial police
interrogation." A new fairness doctrine,
the Meese doctrine for equalizing the
rights of rich and poor: Deny them to
everyone.
The Justice report suggests that
instead of Miranda we might videotape
police interviews to prevent interro-
See KRAUTHAMMER on 5
- SI
I?
Si
Apoesilypse none too oom
Dissatisfied student in search of the proverbial 1 percent
I just finished reading an above-average
pulp detective novel called
"Tourist Season." in which a notor
ious but ravenously read columnist for
a fictional newspaper, the Miami Sun,
comes up about three counts shy of a
headline (journalese for three bricks
shy of a load, three cards short of a
deck, etc.) and begins writing columns
portraying Southern Florida as a heat
seized complex of overpriced condom
iniums populated by neurotic, taste
less Valium widows retiring on pensions
large enough to afford plastic flamin
gos, navel oranges and knickknacks to
send to the grandkids in Cleveland for
Christmas or Hanukkah.
Those who aren't paradise-homing
retirees are Cuban flotsam, the pimps,
the heavyweight gamblers, the unsta
ble muscle of organized racketeering
in pre-Castro Cuba, and the refuse of a
Havana mythical for making rich Amer
icans and globetrotters in general check
their scruples and human decency at
airport customs. Not only did the
columnist paint modern Miami in these
colors, he went about as a vigilante
feeding tourists to crocodiles and stuf
fing the Coppertone-doused remains
into Samsonite luggage in an attempt
to counterbalance the leverage of mind
less real-estate development, the mange
of Kodak-clicking tourists, stark raving
civic corruption and just plain cerebal
dwarfism.
By now the question entering your
mind is, and logically so, what in the
name of the Bob Devaney Sports Center
does any of this have to do with me?
Well, 1 could go on to mention some
thing the fictional columnist in "Tour
ist Season" doesn't mention that
every March and April, thousands of
fraternity brothers and sorority sisters
descend on Florida to perform drunken
high-wire acts from the balconies of
20-story motels. Many of these poten
tial circus stars hail from Nebraska U.
But that isn't my point.
My point, and I apologize for the
roundabout way I got here, is a number
that continually pops up in conversation
around UNL It pops up at Daily Nebra
skan luncheons with Martin Massen
gale and Ronald Roskens. It pops up
when people gather to argue over the
Lied Center. It pops up when anyone
makes an attempt to implement some
thing at this university that might
transform the Stepford kids of the bus
iness school or the Young Americans
for separate restrooms for black stu
dentsfor women at homefor Holden
Caulfield in the bonfirefor separate
toilets for gay studentsfor Stryper
more often from the bell tower into
reasonable fascimilies of open-minded,
creatively thinking college students.
II H.:fwi--. . '
"VV x. Jf . r ...-- sr .11
The number is 1 percent. When fel
low columnist Chris McCubbin wrote a
piece of fire and brimstone on the DN
editorial page pronouncing the univer
sity a degraded ruin from which every
one with any flickering hope of re
ceiving an education must flee beffore
the clematis-veined pillars topple
around their empty heads, he received
a letter from a graduate student who
estimated that only 1 percent of the
university population were anything
more than overstuffed seat cushions for
the classrooms they occupied.
Charles
Lieurance
An anonymous ASUN official told me
only 1 percent of the UNL student body
was gay and that's why gay students
shouldn't receive money for program
ming under the auspices of the Univer
sity Program Council. According to
those who are against the Lied Center,
only 1 percent of university students
would actually go see a major produc
tion of an opera or symphony if it were
offered them. The remainder look at
opera as a forum for an elephantine
woman wearing Swiss Miss Cocoa braid
and Hagar the Horrible armor cater
wauling while she hoists a broadsword
above her head. Once my editor told me
that only 1 percent of the student pop
ulation had any idea what my friends
and I who work on the Thursday maga
zine Diversions were talking about.
Like the columnist in the novel "Tour
ist Season," sometimes I sit and watch
this place move. I hear blank-eyed Eng
lish majors who read in Cosmo that
retail management suddenly likes Eng
lish majors tell me they're really into
grammar, and when I mention Joyce or
Shelley they ask me if they did any
Letter Policy
The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief
letters to the editor from all readers
and interested others.
Letters will be selected for publica
tion on the basis of clarity, originality,
timeliness and space available. The
Daily Nebraskan retains the right to
edit all material submitted.
Readers also are welcome to submit
material as guest opinions. Whether
material should run as a letter or guest
opinion, or not run, is left to the
editor's discretion.
877M?A
thing cool with grammar. I hear profes
sors name whole classes after bad Hol
lywood B-movies from the '50s and '60s
like "The Night of the Ghouls" and
"The Slime People." I read papers by
fellow English majors with no punctua
tion, papers where "ain't" is spelled
"anit." I actually met a girl at a party
who told me the American Revolution
ary War was fought by the North and
the South and that the Civil War was
fought by the Germans and Japanese.
She then asked if I'd accepted Christ
as my personal savior.
Where is this 1 percent? Like the
columnist in "Tourist Season," I'm
beginning to see the character of this
place a wasteland of bake sales,
absolute conformity, dreadful music,
the mindless raising of hands in class
rooms where professors look at their
students as hideous creatures spawned
from nuclear accidents, people who've
come to school to be channeled into
large machines, who need jobs that
won't question their Bibles, who are in
pursuit of really cool grammar. It wasn't
always this way, just as Florida wasn't
always "Newark with palm trees." Things
might change, but for now I'd like to
write the column that nearly got the
columnist in "Tourist Season" fired.
I'd like to write a column wishing
the worst of natural disasters on the
whole neritic mess. For the sun to
stand still, for the rules of grammar to
be suspended, for God to come down in
the form of Clarabell the clown and for
everyone to have to ask "Why is this
happening?" and "Will we still get
cable in the dorms?"
Those in the 1 percent, well, after
ward we'll know who you are. The ones
at home behind typewi iters trying to
sort out the world, the ones attempting
to make sense of the senseless, and to
make time for the timeless.
When it's over maybe I'll meet you
all.
Lieurance is an English, philosophy and
art major and Daily Nebraskan senior
reporter.
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