Tuesday. March 17, 1907
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
EcuuconaJ
r-:l-.
JtiT Korl.clik, Editor, A 72 1 706
James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor
Lisi' Olst'n, Associate Heirs Editor
Mike Kcilley, Night News Editor
Joan Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
TAW.
soraskan
University ol Nebraska-Lincoln
s i
C !.,. '. 1 VI rJ . I W.
Who's listening?
Faculty wants higher quality
The UNL Chapter of the
American Association of
University Professors has
made mi impressive initiative
aimed at combating the once
creeping and now galloping
mediocritization of UNL. Their
crucial message, their desper
ate message, is that immedi
ate action to increase profes
sors' salaries needs to be taken.
The AAIT outlined four steps
necessary to halt the movement
toward academic bankruptcy of
a once-great school: the ability
to make substantive counteroffers
to professors wooed by other
schools; a 15 percent increase in
average pay, an explicit NU
Foundation program for endowed
chairpersons and wide-ranging
faculty involvement in getting
access to outside financial sup
port. As the AAUP cogently argues
in its statement, other farm states,
just as affected by the agricul
ture crisis, have supported state
schools at levels that at least
preserve, if not increase, quality.
Yet there is more than meets
Letters
Gestring applauds
I would like to commend the Daily
Nebraskan editorial and news staff lor
their efforts during the past few weeks.
Your coverage of the ASUN elections
was detailed and unbiased this year,
and your endorsement of Unite was an
intelligent and well-written article. I
realize that it is difficult to cover an
election such as this, but you did an
admirable job. In addition, your expla
nation and recommendations about
the resolutions were precise and help
Campus, DN biased
Although Thursday's editorial in the
Daily Nebraskan tried to explain giving
almost half a page of coverage to a
"joke" political party (NOFAG) by
claiming the paper wanted "to provide
accurate and equal coverage during
t he election," 1 found t he space devoted
to this article indicative of the warped
values pervading this campus.
The paper provided no mention at all
of photographer JEB's slide show, "Out
of Bounds: A Lesbian Journey," pres
DN shouldn't have
The NOFAG party write-in campaign
was not funny and was in very poor
taste. 1 knew that. I bet the other
22,000 students who saw it knew that,
too. But just in case we didn't know,
Monday the DN poured forth for our
edification blubbering editorials by
Charles Lieurance and two campus
ministers. What do you think the rest of
us are? Do you think we don't know
cretinism when we see it?
The DN press coverage last week and
Monday served only to stroke the egos
of NOFAG's creators and to bait an
already harassed group of students.
Imagine how deflating it would have
been for NOFAG if nobody said any
thing at all, if the DN (and Lieurance
and Doerrand Randall) simply ignored
NOFAG, if NOFAG's gibberish was
responded to with silence, and their
antics met only long suffering gazes
from better people.
the eye in the AAl'P's press
release: He who has ears, let him
hear.
The AAUP termed its propos
als "a rescue mission." While the
release stressed the positive, an
undercurrent of despair and a
panic coqld be discerned by the
sensitive observer. Certainly un
der current conditions, a little
despair and panic is appropriate.
Perhaps, more than the prop
osals themselves, this tone
indicative of the obvious senti
ment of many UNL faculty mem
bers needs to be understood
by the NU Foundation, the
administration and, most of all,
by the governor and unicameral.
The unstated tone of the press
release is a plea, a cry of desper
ation by people who obviously
love this school.
The flight from UNL is in
creasing geometrically. The
superstructure of the school has
been badly shaken, but can be
repaired if decisive action is
taken now:
Is anybody really listening?
election coverage
ful to most students.
Also, I have been very pleased with
the coverage you have given to the
activities and meetings of the Interfra
ternity Council. Although all of our
functions are obviously not newsworthy
to all students on campus, I appreciate
the coverage of the relevant and impor
tant IFC activities.
Rick Gestring
senior
agriculture
against homosexuals
ented the same day this article appeared.
This show, part of Women's Week "87
and attended by over 100 people, spoke
out against the violence and oppres
sion visited on lesbian and gay people
in the last 400 years, and provided a
healthy, positive look at lesbian life.
I hope the DN will avoid such blat
ant bias in the future.
Barbara DiBernard
associate professor
English
run NOFAG article
Morons like NOFAG make news, 1
suppose, because their swaggering
display of their own deficiencies is
shocking in the same way a self
immolation is.
Inevitably, the story stirred up a
weeping and wailing and gnashing of
teeth from otherwise bright people.
Lieurance, Doerr and Randail oblig
ingly wrung their hands while the DN
held the ceremonial washbasin.
DN's election-day story about NOFAG
was obvious bullbaiting and shouldn't
have been printed; Monday's editorial
response was as irritating as a car with
a stuck horn.
In this case of NOFAG's pathetic
embarrassing clowning, I believe silence
would have been the most deafening
response.
Michelle Wriese
junior
undeclared
r -. j Vr-c- -
5- " jf"! 'ga
MH6Re owes w
God audi Msun in thew place
Religious consciousness inevitable, but major faiths are not
I have many opinions. Some are so
strong that I like to call them
knowledge. I say, "I have an opin
ion about people: They should be free,
just as I have an opinion about the
color of my eyes: They are blue."
You also have opinions, and some so
strong you think they must be some
thing more. But they are, on the surface,
words. Nothing more or less. Behind
these opinions, but different from them,
are the general beliefs that create
these strings of works. Beliefs that are
less simple and obvious, but which we
refuse to give up. They exist, deep
seated within us. Any number of sayings
seem able to take their place, but as
these sentences rise and fall in discus
sion and experience, the beliefs go on.
Too general to be intuitions, with too
much substance to be an attitude, they
are some kind of conviction.
With this kind of backdrop, I say, "I
think this" and "1 think that" and I
even take a stab at why, sometimes,
and say, "Look, I have proven it." But
for all the other words and criticisms
that then result, my beliefs live on.
They always escape to find a new
house, after the old house has been
destroyed. At least some beliefs do
the important ones. Like a belief in
"religion."
Religious belief is inescapable be
cause no one can achieve certainty of
the future, and no one can gain control
of the nature of things. I think these
may be essential to our religious belief,
because if we were able to gain both of
these, we would have no need for it.
Indeed, we would be gods. It's the
way we mold our lives around the fact
that we aren't such gods that make
religion inescapable; the language of
this basic religion uses words like
"hope," "luck," "wish," "want," and
"believe." These are ritual words to
real life and natural fact. We could just
plan and act. But instead we wish and
"dream for the Utopian and for the
admittedly impossible, and it's said to
be only normal.
The object of religion is not fear.
That future is not certain doesn't mean
it will go wrong, far from it. That we
don't control the nature of things is
probably an advantage at this point.
And we owe much to the eons-old
natural stability. The biologist would
point out our very existence through
evolution. The physicist would explain
that in our sun's history the physical
constraints of the universe have not
changed the ultimate foundation of
the universe remains. .
One can seize on this as an explana
tion for our existence, just as one can
the word "God." Where did God come
from? How did matter and the physical
vwxesTMC uy... act
constants come about? These questions
are on the same footing. WTien asking
questions about the existence of every
thing, you can expect either to hear
about something further or get no
answer at all. Eventually you must
come to an unanswerable question.
Either of these questions could be that.
Now, some may be inclined to think
anything as sophisticated as the world
couldn't have shaped itself, and they
say "the Holy Father did it." But this is
a god that not only conceives and
creates every cubic centimeter of the
universe, He's also a ruler, blessing,
cursing, judging, taking vengance and
so on. And he plays a special role in
human destiny, in accordance with the
dictates of the cosmic war. So surely,
this much more sophisticated thing
that controls and creates the world is
that much more unlikely to exist by
itself than matter and force. This in
itself proves nothing, but it does show
how a way of speaking can go further
than we wish.
Lee
Basham
Most of us aren't physicists. Where
else can we put the word religion?
Religion is a fact, but it's also a feeling,
an experience. It's an emotional exper
ience. I think the kind of experience
associated with religion is one of awe
and humbleness. To not be an elaborate
conceit, it must be awe of something
not caused by man and something
independent of him.
The major world religions are Islam,
Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism.
Each make man out to be something
more than he seems. The first three
declare man the image of God and the
center of divine attention.
In Islam, Christianity and Judaism,
God is a shadow caster, while we are
the shadows he casts. When we exalt
his form, we exalt our own. Buddhism
puts man one step away from "god
head," where the next step in the
succession of lives is becoming part of
God himself.
In all these beliefs man is godlike
beyond similarity, he is godlike in
destiny. This is not an unseen con
sequence of doctrine, but its intent.
Conceit is more direct, more focused in
a maxim that holds for all these
religions: "Withhumans, tfie major
ity is never right. " Few ascend, few
receive mercy or salvation, and the
i )
nonchalant "
chosen people are only one out of
hundreds of nations and all races.
So much is problematic in these
manlike religions; is there any alter
natives? Perhaps we should believe in
trees. This is no mockery. If you want to
think of something truly beyond you,
the uncut forest and the mountains
beneath it are what you seek. Nature is
a realm not caused by man and in
dependent of him. It's not invulnerable
to him; it requires more than awe and
humbleness; it needs care.
Nature gives us our most religiously
powerful metaphors. Consider the
parables of Jesus. His best are descrip
tions of nature, like the tree or the tiny
mustard seed. The facts of nature
supply the wonder and the possibility.
The earth must be experienced. There
must be life to wonder at, tunnels in
the sand, roots in the soil, moss on the
bark, nests in the branches and eyes in
the dark. This is a doctrine I can live
with. It doesn't offer me any great
insights into my existence, but it
doesn't give me any excuses for being
cruel, either. It doesn't tell me who is
evil and who is not, but tells me who
isn't the center of the universe. And
though it tells me some practices are
wrong, condemning the perpetrators to
incineration remains another idea It
gives me something that couldn't be
wrong to believe, and 1 know it gives me
feeling. And it gives me something
honest to fight for.
Covenants are supernatural contracts
which give man certain rights against
God, and God certain rights against
man. But nature is witnout all this. It is
our unbought appreciation of nature
that gives it a religious touch, not
what nature will do for us as followers.
And nature, once lost, is wanted
again. Today, I think, there is a growing
appreciation for what was probably
man's first approach to nature, religious
approach without any intervening be
liefs or suspicious importance for man.
Here, to be a believer is simply to
appreciate.
Basham is a senior political science
major.
Editorial Policy
Unsigned editorials represent offi
cial policy of the fall 198& Daily Nebras
kan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebras
kan Editorial Board. Its members are
Jeff Korbelik , editor, James Rogers,
editorial page editor; Lise Olsen, asso
ciate news editor, Mike Reilley, night
news editor and Joan Rezac, copy desk
chief.
The Daily' Nebraska's publishers
are the regents.
