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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 13, 1987)
1 s lit IS rr-- - A .. . Mostly sunny and rr.HJ toiy. H.gh CO-OS with south winds 5-15 mph. Fairtonight, low 35. Partly sunny Saturday, high near CO. News Digest Pago 2 Editorial Page 4 Sports Page 5 Entertainment Page 6 Classified Page 7 March 13, 1987 University of Nebraska-Lincoln Vol.86 No.122 VtD Kfrl I O "771 Pollock, Boldt unite UNL as team wins senate race ASUN election gains voter response By Joeth Zucco Staff Reporter President-elect Andy Pollock and first vice president-elect Shawn Boldt "united" the university with an unoffi cial 41 percent win of total votes (1,288) over AIM's Greg Dynek and Darin Armstrong's 28 percent (892) in Wednesday's ASUN elections. A run-off election between second vice-presidential candidates will be next Wednesday. John Bergmeyer of Unite carried 39 percent of the vote (1,213), and Michelle Ardis of AIM had 31 percent (953). Of the 20,805 eligible voters, 3,163 students voted, a 1 percent increase over last year's 2,988 voters. Marilyn Beyke, ASUN executive director, said the election went "real smoothly." Voting in Greek houses surpassed both residence halls and off-campus. Greek houses votes increased from 1,189 to 1,230. Residence hall votes also rose, 1,081 to 1,105. Off-campus votes tallied 808. Beyke said all of the constitutional ; amendments failed because only 15 percent of the eligible students voted and according to Article X of the ASUN constitution "amendments shall be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote of the eligible students voting in the elec Regents to discuss budget cuts, ticket surcharge on Saturday By Dorothy Pritchard Staff Reporter A surcharge on football tickets and a $3.1 million cut in the NU budget man dated by the legislature will be dis cussed at the NU Board of Regents meeting Saturday. The $3.50 surcharge would help pay for the $14.9 million student recreation center. Students and faculty at UNL would be exempt from the charge, which would be added to football tickets for an indefinite number of years. NU President Ronald Roskens will present his recommendations on the $3.1 million cut in the university's , O TITI Ball to a . . , ,m ,., , , , j i . 1 ; .. ..... " -Cix' . ( ,; '.'V . I : I Doug CarrollDaily Nebraskan Chris Eskridge, associate professor of criminal justice, testi fies at the Nebraska legislature Thursday in favor of abolish ing the Nebraska death penalty. tion." Proposed amendments included a name change from ASUN to UNL Stu dent government; a change from the present method of voting for ASUN president and first vice president as a slate and for second vice president as an individual, to voting for all three as a slate; shifting the responsibility of agenda setting from the first vice pres ident to the speaker of the senate; and, in recall elections, changing the number of petition signers required from 33 percent of regularly enrolled full-time students to 33 percent of students vot ing in the last ASUN election. Despite signs posted around campus saying "Piss off ASUN," by voting for continued membership in the Nebraska State Student Association; 1,667 stu dents voted against NSSA. In the opinion polls, 87 percent of voters were against the GayLesbian Student Association's receiving student-fee funding. Video-taped classes also was opposed by 89 percent of the students. Student fees for the Daily Nebras kan, the University Program Council Speakers Program, debt service, the University Health Center, the Nebraska Unions and the Campus Recreation Programs and Facilities were approved. See RESULTS on 3 budget. Roskens asked the three chan cellors to make their recommendations on the cuts and report back to him. The chancellors met with Roskens to dis cuss their proposals on March 4. Roskens will make his recommendations based on those proposals. In an earlier proposal to the board, Roskens suggested eliminating the NU School of Technical Agriculture at Cur tis, the statewide adult-learning pro grams within the Division of Continu ing Studies and the Lincoln Division of the College of Nursing. Regent Robert Koefoot of Grand Island suggested eliminating the col leges of architecture and dentistry to meet the budget cuts. bolisln deatlfo penalty , .... Ward WilliamsDaily Nebraskan Lee's gravestone Burial site iiaitpticedl Former professor 'never wanted to leave' By Kent Endacott Staff Reporter James Lees, a British-born pro fessor of Greek at UNL for decades, loved the university so much that he never wanted to leave. And he never will. rrji Lees's grave lies in the open now in front of Architecture Hall on City Campus. It goes mostly unnoticed. Soon, the friendly old oak tree planted by Professor Lauerence Fos sler in 1905 will leaf out, shading Lees's resting spot, marked by 580 pound granite rock. The inscription on the grave mar ker reads: "Dr. James Thomas Lees; He served well; 1889-1926." Lees, who was a Phi Beta Kappa professor and was named the uni versity's first provost in 1919, came By Michael Hooper Senior Reporter Since Nebraska's death penalty for first-degree murder is not uniformly applied and is too costly and time consuming, it should be abolished, Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers said Thurs day. Fourteen people are now on death row in Nebraska, although there have been hundreds of homicides since the death penalty was reinstated, Chambers said. Chambers told the Judiciary Com mittee that the majority of murderers are not subjected to the death penalty and eventually end up back on the streets. Convicted murderers not sentenced to death serve an average of 1 7 years, he said. Chambers argued for his bill, LB675, which would abolish the death penalty for any person convicted of first-degree murder and require that such a person serve a life sentence or at least 30 years in prison. The sentences of those on death row would be reduced to life imprisonment. ': HO MA'.;1"' ! V.. . : .i y , -" .. to here in 1889 after completing his doctorate in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. At the time, NU was considered among the top four or five public universities in the nation. Lees was fond of referring to NU as the "Athens of the West." r. In 1922, Lees was forced to retire because of an unknown disease. Me later moved to California, where he died in February 1926. He was cre mated there, but his wife brought his ashes back to Lincoln and Chan cellor Samuel Avery arranged for a memorial service at the university. If nothing else, Lees's grave is a monument to NU's often-forgotten period of greatness. "In the period from about 1892 to 1914, this was one of the premier state universities, equal to universi ties such as Michigan," said Robert Knoll, English-professor and a uni versity historian by hobby. Lees will live forever in the litera ture of Nebraska author Willa Gather, one of his students. One of the char acters in Cather's "The Professor's House" is said to be based on Lees. debated at Meaning A person accused of first-degree murder can make nine appeals in the state and federal courts, Chambers said. The appeals are time-consuming, costly and wold be reduced if the death penalty were abolished, he said. . Opponents said that the death penalty serves as a deterent to committing murder. Don Lienemann of Papilion said that if murderers knew they would be con victed, they would not murder. He said murderers know they can get a lesser sentence than capital punishment. However, Chris Eskridge, a UNO criminal-justice professor, said there is no evidence showing that the death penalty is a deterent to committing murder. He said a recent United Nations report showed that capital punishment tends Co increase the level of homicides slightly. The fatal flaw of the death penalty is the chance that someone could be con victed of a murder he or she did not commit and be executed, Eskridge said. Since 1952, 71 people in the U.S. were unjustly executed for murders Program to relieve morale problem By Linda Hartman Associate News Editor A four-point program presented by the local American Association of Uni versity Professors chapter is a con structive way to. get officials to focus on faculty problems, said an AAUP past president. The program's focus is to "stem the .tide of faculty exodus and demoraliza tion at the university," according to an AAUP press release. "Faculty morale has been in a downward spiral for several years," said past president Susan Welch, UNL professor of political science. The number of professors leaving UNL is increasing, and those left behind are discouraged about the state of the uni versity, she said. : AAUP members presented the prop osal Wednesday to legislators and members of the NU Board of Regents, Faculty Senate and NU Foundation. It calls for: " O The NU Foundation to guarantee on a short-term basis the funds neces sary to retain faculty now receiving offers from other institutions. Welch said the guarantee is needed because "we don't want to lose anybody we already have just for the want of $5,000 or $10,000." O The preparation by the adminis tration of a special salary package request for legislators' immediate con sideration. The AAUP estimates that such a package would need to be about $13 million to raise salaries 15 percent and make them competitive with com parable institutions. O The NU Foundation to commit itself to a fund drive to establish endowed faculty chairs awarded on a competitive basis throughout the uni versity. The Foundation should seek a commitment from the Legislature to match each dollar raised from private sources for the fund. See AAUP on 3 they did not commit, Eskridge said. Lawrence McNamara, a Catholic bishop from Grand Island, said that killing someone for killing someone else is not justice. "We've tried violence for a long time . . . we've taken an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth for thousands of years," McNamara said. "It seems to me that violence only begets violence. So do we need violence in the public order?" Becky Mehring of Grand Island, said that the court system causes stress for the families of someone who has been murdered because they know through some appeal or ruling, the murderer won't be executed. Mehring's father Eugene Zimmer man was murdered in 1979 by Charles Palmer, who now is on death row in Nebraska. "It always bothers me when a murder er on death row says, 'I want to live,' because my dad wanted to live too," Mehring said, with tears in her eyes. The last time the death penalty was carried out was in 1959, when Charles Starkweather was executed for first degree murder.