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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 3, 1987)
Tuesday, March, 3, 1937 Pago 4 Daily Ncbraskan Mimmm 1 ; ' " ' 1 "i ' i N-n D.iily University ol Nebraska-Lincoln .(Si. SMU deserved the worst Southern Methodist Univer sity simply must be wri thing not in ecstasy but in agony, after the school's foot ball program brought shame upon the school, the athletic depart ment, even its community, when found guilty of violating several National Collegiate Athletic As socation rules. Only, the penal ties administered were not strict enough. SMU football will be non existent next year. The following year the team can play seven conference games, but none at home. The team is ineligible for bowl games and television privi leges and was slapped with sev eral more penalties. The losers include the school's athletic teams. Many of these programs exist because of the revenue brought in by the foot ball program. Sound familiar? Football is as popular in Texas as it is in Nebraska. SMU had a program that drew fans and money. Also finding their way into the loss column are the teams SMU would have played, including the Big Eight's Oklahoma. The Soon ers were scheduled to play SMU next year and the year after. The NSSA money better I'NL's membership in the Nebraska State Student Association has gener ated considerable debate this semes ter. To the uninformed, NSSA doesn't seem to be a bad thing. Perhaps it can even do us some good. Let's examine I'NL's needs and how NSSA can meet them. We can identity three interests I'NL has at the unicameral this semester: student-regent vote, the recreation center and our budget. What has NSSA done, and what can NSSA do, to advice : I'NL's interests? After repeated 1)'ad-' gering, NSSA's general assembly took a favorable position on the student-regent vote. But the legislation was Killed in committee, 5-1-2, and it appears NSSA's help did us no good. Further, NSSA's constitution prohibits it from address ing campus issues such as the rec cen ter or our budget. It is clear, then, that of our interests at the unicameral, NSSA does us little, if any, good. How can UNL best represent itself? Another lobbyist for NSSA or for Math editorial just missed comic genius Your editorial "Math hysteria" (DN, Feb. 23) was well-named it was truly hysterical. Of the many jokes, I had two favorites. First, the line about "a ple thora of technocrats hanging about the boardrooms of America" was most amusing. The phrase almost makes sense if you want to compare the number of technocrats to the number of journalists there. And comparing technocrats with the financial, man agerial and legal types who actually overwhelm the boardrooms would have been totally without comedic value. The second line I really loved was the one about the Chinese economy. You know, where you said that if mathematical education was really important to an economy, then the recent superiority of Chinese students JHT KurlM-lik, Mi tor, 472-1 TOO Jiinu's Hors, Editorial I'atje Editor List' Olson, Associate News Editor Mike Uoilloy, Siulit Men s Editor .loan Kmc, Co) Desk Chief not NCAA move will force the Soon ers into playing one less game or adding another at a moment's notice. Finally, non-football weekends can't do much for the Dallas economy. But the real loser is the uni versity. School officials and administrators should not have let the violations occur. Most dealt with the school's booster program, including player pay ments. On paper, NCAA sanc tions look severe. In fact, the NCAA's decision is too lenient. Stricter enforcement is needed. Disbanding the SMU program for more than one year would have been a step in that direction. Too many times athletics are put too high on a pedestal. Penalties more severe may have shown the rest of the coun try that the NCAA means busi ness. Until then, the other ath letic programs, not all, watch SMU lick its wounds and coTv" tinue to play the "game." One final note: It was interest ing how the college recruiters flooded the SMU campus the day after the decision was handed down. Talk about being put on the market. spent elsewhere I'NL wouldn't be effective. The univer sity has several lobbyists, who do a good job of providing and explaining information. The university, however, has no grass-roots appeal. The more t han $20,000 that UNL spends on NSSA could be better spent on newsletters mailed to the parents of every student at UNL, explaining our situation and urging them to write their state sena tors. We also could use the funds to send ASUN officials around the state to talk to clubs and business leaders. Students speaking to citizens will be much more effective than one employee of NSSA in Lincoln. As can be seen, the money UNL spends on NSSA can be better utilized elsewhere. With this in mind, the answer to the question of UNL's mem bership in NSSA becomes clear. Doug Weems Tim Geisert ASUN senator ASUN second-vice Rob Mellion president Committee for Fee Allocation chairman -. in that area already should have over come the innate inefficiencies of their economic and political systems. I mean, if math education can't overcome a few periodic purges and rapidly industrial ize the biggest agrarian economy in the world, what good is it? You just missed making it a true cl issic. As you claimed that you wer en't trying to prove that math isn't important, I was sure that you were about to use the line that some of your best friends know some mathematics. But keep working on it, and I'm sure that you'll find a promising career in editorial humor ahead of you. Leo G. Chouinard II associate professor mathematics and statistics J. I Jt i ff j I iSsss H 3 tjgs NX I u SENATOR KNepy IS CR)SHeO... He UKS $mCTre FlftST TO ANN0UNC6 THAT WON'T RvjN " 6Met;iiirM of tike CmdiE Prophylactics migrate from wallets to purses in AIDS '80s ne of the remarkable twists in the plot of "The Return of the Condom" is that it's making the biggest hit among women. A covering that can only be worn by men is being discussed by, marketed to and even bought by the opposite sex. In the 1940s and '50s, this condom was part of the rite of passage of the sexually anxious male. In the 1980s, it's becoming part of the parapherna lia of the sexually anxious female. Thirty years ago, the condom made an impression in the wallets of insecure men. Today it's finding a place in the purses of nervous women. Then, it was used for birth control; now, for AIDS control. I saw my first ad directed at women just a few months ago in Ms. magazine. The message began with a woman say ing the obvious: "I never thought I'd buy a condom." She went on to des cribe sex these days as "a risky busi ness" and to end with the pitch, "So why take your fears to bed?" Since then, I have noted condoms in pastel containers bearing names that are less reminiscent of warriors and more of women's pages, e.g. Lifestyles. I have also seen the most dramatic pitch to women, saying bluntly: "I'll do a lot for love, but I'm not ready to die for it." According to loose industry esti mates, 40 percent of condoms currently are bought by women. Use some arm chair calculations, factor in booming sales in the gay community, and it seems likely that, among heterosexu als, more women are buying condoms than men. Does this matter to anyone but a market researcher? With the possibil ity of AIDS behind each new sexual encounter, we care less who buys con Political epiphany and a dialectic in a downtown bar in the afternoon J ast week I noticed an unusual I . phenomenon. I saw a small, scruffy J-Jdog running down Uth Street. Cars were dodging the hairy shape, but it kept yelping and running. It wasn't alter anything; it was heading straight down the street, an unlicensed dog in the left lane. Of course, it only took a second for me to realize that this was the dying ideal. "Unlicensed dog in the left lane" is a rare breed lately. Whenever I real ize these things, as a student, I make a toast to science, sociology and the new enlightenment. I went to a bar. I walked in and the tables were doms than that they get used. But I am still struck by the ideathat, here again, women are being urged to be "respon sible," women are the ones who are both self-protective and other-protective. In the original version of "The Con dom," men were more likely to be charged with birth control. If boys car ried that promise of sexual adulthood in their wallet, at least adulthood was associated with responsibility. Fathers of teen-age boys, never long on intimate sexual talk, did offer one perennial and charming warning not to get some girl "knocked up." 3 Ellen l vjuuuman A Later, in the confused course of what we call the sexual revolution, women took on the role of contraceptor. Many were eager for this power. They thought it was safer and even fairer since "women are the ones who get preg nant." But many also became uncomforta ble in their new-fangled inequality. Fathers stopped delivering even cur sory warnings to their sons; mothers gave them to their daughters. Men found it easier to stop worrying about pregnancy; women wondered if men found it too easy to stop worrying about them altogether. At the turn of the '80s, as an amateur sociologist, I once conducted a totally unscientific study of the relationshios of my women friends. We figured out together that, on the whole, men who empty. The bar stools had a handful of sapiens gooped over them. There were two men, a gentleman and a sleepy- Lee Basham ) i looking woman. Two men were crush ing unpopped popcorn with their fin gernails talking about, their new hi asked women whether they were using birth control before they had sex were more caring and better prospects for the long run than those who didn't. Wrhat then of this Ms.-directed pitch for condoms? Why has safety become more of an issue among women than men? Only women can get pregnant, but AIDS is an equal-opportunity dis ease. Perhaps men are greater gamblers or more afraid to appear afraid. Per haps women simply talk more among themselves, expressing their fears and sharing advice. Mostly, I suspect that this gap in the behavior of men and women facing the same sexual epidemic is the legacy of the past generation of change. Women have kept watch over the exigencies of their sex lives. They have been the caretakers, the calculators, of risks. They have continued this role. In this new day, so-called men's magazines still portray sex as a sport, while women's are full of messages about health. In the final analysis, though, con doms are used by men. Even when women are persuaded or frightened into buying them, it's men who wear condoms. The man who is reluctant to protect himself and his partner is probably not in an updated version of my sociological study a good prospect. At this moment, when AIDS has turned the sexual revolution upside down, one of the tricks of social policy is to get men to take the initiative again. The much-heralded "Return of the Condom" must also be a return to mutual responsibility. J 1987, The Boston Globe Newspaper CompanyWashington Post Writers Group Goodman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Boston Globe. Detroit models, I believe. "Admit they're junk, Joe ..." ". . . And if you buy one of those foreign cars, someone's gonna drop a hammer on you." Keen analysis was needed. 1 stepped up and sat down, "Look, guys, if you say, 'I'll only buy your stuff, Sam,' Sam can sell you anything he wants. So Sam can either hand over a real machine or Sam can disguise junk. Which is cheaper, eh?" The first man cut in, "So we say, 'Hey Herman, hey Chung, the real thing See BASHAM on 5