Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Tuesday, March 31, 1987
r" I. .
sfrraslcan
University ot Nebraska-Lincoln
Qmips amid quote
Winter's reprise hits hard
Is anybody out tluTe?
Last weekend the Daily
Nebraskan stall' stumbled
upon the same problem many
UNL students came across: how
to got back to Lincoln. The
untimely snow storm left many
students stranded. Those staffers
who made it back were wary of
putting out a paper for today
because we didn't know if anyone
would be back to read it. For
those who made it. . .welcome
back.
O Congratulations to the Ne
braska men's and women's bas
ketball coaches. Danny Nee and
Angela Beck found success in
their first year- at the helm. Beck
guided her team t o a 10-13 record
and a fourth-place finish in the
Big Light. Her feats earned her
the Converse District V Coach of
the Year award.
Nee put excitement back into
Nebraska basketball as he guided
his team to a third-place finish
in the National Invitation Tour
nament and Jinished the season
21-12. Many people never expected
the lluskers to win 20 games. In
fact, many never expected them
to finish above .500. The same
went fov the women.
O Two weeks ago the ASUN
electoral commission penalized
the Unite party for violating
electoral-commission rules by
Letters
m 1 . 1
i uu mucn smoKe in
The amount of space designated as
non-smoking in the Nebraska Union by
the large-screen television is ridicu
lously small. Over 90 percent of this
room is allocated to those who feel the
need to pollute the air and commit
suicide.
A recent article in the Lincoln Jour
nal (March Hi) notes that only 25 per
cent of Nebraskans now smoke. With
this statistic in mind, a much fairer
division would be to designate the
south end of this room as the smoking
area.
This more equitable distribution of
space would have other benefits as
w ell. Many of the smelly and unsight ly
sandbox ashtrays would be eliminated,
reducing the number that accidentally
get kicked over. It would also reduce
the number of chairs and rug areas thai
are burned because of cigarettes that
inevitably get dropped.
Quoting the American Lung Associa
tion in the same Lincoln Journal arti
cle, "Non-smokers have the right to
breathe clean air, free from harmful
Gillette Dairy Company complimented
I am writing in response to the
uninformed critics of the Gillette Daily
Company's campaign to solicit funds
for the new recreation center.
First, some have suggested that Bob
Devaney's and Tom Osborne's pictures
on Gillette milk cartons has replaced
pictures of missing children. This is
incorrect. The Gillette Company ran
the missing children campaign for
approximately two years, and the
campaign ended more than six months
ago. The roc-center fund drive is not
preventing missing children from being
reunited with their families.
Others have suggested that it is
pathetic to see Bob and Tom on milk
cartons t lying to solicit donations for
JoITKoihelik, Editor, 472-1766
James Honors, Editorial Pa ye Editor
Lise Olson, Associate News Editor
Mike Heilley, Niyht News Editor
Joan Rcziic, Copy Desk Chief
exceeding their campaign spend
ing limit. Before the election can
be certified by the commission,
Unite must agree to four condi
tions. Their biggest task: signing
a contract to prepare a manual
on the proper conduct of an elec
tion campaign. The guide must
be approved by the ASl'N direc
tor of development and a faculty
adviser before Sept. 1.
It's too bad Unite got off on
the wrong foot, but it may be
beneficial in the long run. The
manual Unite will prepare should
them on possible pitfalls.
O The Chronicle of Higher
Education reported in its March
18 edition that the athletic
department at the University of
South Carolina has given $.")()4,()l)()
to the campus's libraries. The
donation represents athletic
department earnings from the
broadcasts of two of the univer
sity's football games last season
on ESPN, a cable TV channel.
Of course, South Carolina
probably isn't being hit by budget
cuts as hard as NU is. But the NU
athletic department should take
note for future reference.
A spokesman from the South
Carolina athletic department, wJio
knew the libraries needed money,
said it best: "We're part of the
same university."
a 1 riir 7
uie union i v areas
and irritating tobacco smoke. This
right supersedes the right to smoke
when the two conflict." This article
also stated that cigarette smoking kills
more Americans each year than cocaine,
heroin and other illicit drugs, alcohol
abuse, car accidents, homicide and
suicide combined. It is hard to believe
that students attending a school of'
"higher education" even smoke, know
ing this!
We have strict standards on the
quality of water we drink; the same
standards should apply to the air we
breathe indoors. A smoker should not
be allowed to pollute what is otherwise
clean air. If smokers wish to have
breath and clothes that smell like ash
trays, let them, but not in such a large
area that non-smokers are forced to
breathe it too.!
In fact, a much better solution
would be to prohibit cigarette smoking
indoors.
Harry Heafer
graduate student
teachers college
the rec center. Gillette therefore has
donated the space on their milk cartons
to support the rec center because it
feels that it will benefit NU and the
community. I think this generous offer
is far from pathetic and should be
commended.
I would like to thank the Gillette
Dairy Company for its generous donation
in support of UNL recreation, and 1
hope that in the future people are
open-minded enough to get all the
facts before forming an opinion about
the rec center.
Jeff J. Warren
senior
computer science
llim off tike naw
Book banners are freezing the heart, mind, soul of America
"Are you still cold?" ashed the
Snow Queen, and she kissed hint
on the forehead.
Oh, that was colder than ice; it
went quite throuyh to his heart,
half of which teas already a lump
of ice; he felt as if he was yoiuy to
die; hut only for a moment; for
then he seemed ju He well, and he
did not notice the cold all about
him.
"The Snow Queen,"
Hans Christian Anderson
Her name is Vicki Frost and she
found herself one day in control
of the apparatus that legally
freezes hearts and minds. Like those
shards of the goblin's mirror in the
Anderson tale, the splinters Frosi left
in the hearts and minds of the children
of the South reflect and perceive only
ugliness and intolerance. And like the
goblin's glass, the pieces of Frost's
perceptions spread across the land
until no one noticed the cold anymore.
For Vicki Frost took a most unlikely
case to court. Its premise was so
entrenched in the paranoia of the
ignorant and so riddled with ambigui
ties that even the right-wing intelli
gentsia found her logic repellent. Frost
wanted any books that mentioned,
even in passing, nudity, witches, the
imagination, fantasy, the sexual act,
"unwholesome" attitudes, and gods
other than the one and only, banned
from Tennessee schools. Frost won. In
court. Her children and the children of
other fundamentalists could leave the
classroom whenever "disputed" mater
ials were used and could refuse to do
any assignment that violated their
religious beliefs. God as an excuse for
redneck belligerence.
The worst is yet to come, for Frost
.shattered her mirror of narrow-mindedness
over the Reagan-era court system
in a t housand pieces. The jagged-edged
glass spread throughout the South,
resulting in the banning of 40 school
textbooks that promoted "secular
humanism" in Alabama and the ridicu
lous line of reasoning by District Judge
W. Brevard Hand that "secular huma
nism" was as much as religion as fun
damentalism. Hand (yet another name
Too many youngsters at Beasties
shows too few parents really care
The Beastie Boys' March 15 show at
Pershing Auditorium produced a
Hood of indignation that would be
hilarious if it weren't so ominous.
Controversy centers on the presence
of an untoward percentage of junior
high and younger children at a concert
which was, if not X-rated, certainly a
hard R. The show included profuse pro
fanity, several hymns to the glories of
beer, a caged go-go dancer and a 40-foot
erect penis that emerged center stage
during the last song.
The letters in the Lincoln Journal on
the subject have been running about
2-to-l against the Beasties. One partic
ularly ironic letter (March 2;)) was from
a mother who took her sixth-grade
daughter to the show and was aghast at
how "obscene" all three acts were that
evening. This person closed with a wish
that "there will be a more thorough
screening of the types of groups we
allow to perform in our city."
The irony here is obvious. If she was
so shocked at what her daughter was
being exposed to, why didn't she just
screen it herself, take her daughter and
leave. -
I attended. the concert. I was
impressed with the show's vitality and
professional execution. I was encour
aged by the enthusiastic but well
behaved crowd and by the fact that
both black and white young people
attended the show. I found the concert,
overall, very positive.
I agree, however, that the show was
much too raw for pre-adolescents and
that too many young children were
there. Like many Lincoln parents I am
indignant that young children were
resounding of a fairy tale), in the face
of the Parents for the American Way
and the American Civil Liberties Union,
once again introduced into the letter of
the law a pack of ambiguities and a
legally irresponsible rationale for book
banning.
But whereas the ACLU used to be
able to simply grunt in disdain at the
decision of some backw ard good of boy
in long black robe and prepare for an
appeal before someone who made the
advance from single-celled organism
with more grace, now even the chances
of appeal look discouraging, fliere's
glass everywhere. 1 wonder if Vicki
Frost still has enough of it to apply her
rouge properly.
Charles
Lieurance
Jv
And while court decisions are being
made to force publishing companies to
turn their textbooks into annotated
Bibles, legislators are tackling other
sources of learning and exposure (pun
absolutely intentional) from the blind
side. In Nebraska LB1 17, sponsored by
Senator Carol Pursh, and LB181, spon
sored ly Loren Schmidt and Scott
Moore, are slinking their way through
the prairie priapism, each coldly and
flatly supporting the kind of boorish
censorship most thought had disap
peared when Judge Woolsey of the U.S.
Supreme Court let Joyce's "Ulysses"
into the United Stales. The same eter
nally arguable terms pop up again and
again in both bills: "obscene mate
rials, ' "harmful to minors," "prurient
interest," etc. Both bills already have
advanced beyond committee.
LBH7 would make it a felony for a
bookstore to sell "obscene" material,
l itis puts an unjust and unprecedented
burden of critical judgment on a book
seller, the merchant would be ham
pressed even to find a version of the
Bible that floundered in the kind of
abysmal mediocrity this bill suggests.
exposed to this.
But my indignation is not directed at
the Beastie Boys or at Pershing Audito
rium or at the Lincoln city government.
The only people who rationally can be
held responsible for children's expo
sure to a concert beyond their level of
maturity are the children's parents.
Chris
McCubbin
The content ol litis show was not a
secret. If parents had read the Jour
nal's preview they would have known
about the dancer and the group's glori
fication of alcohol. If they had played
the album, they would have known that
the Beasties use nasty language. If they
had watched the video, they would
have known that the band advocates
non-conformity and rebellion. If. they
had listened to the Beasties' No. 1 hit
song "Fight For Your Right," they
would have heard lyrics like "Your dad
catch you smokin' man he said 'No
way'hypocrite smokes 10 packs a
day" and "Your mom threw away your
best porno mag."
Obviously, few parents did this. There
is a growing, dangerous attitude among
parents that the moral education of
their children is the responsibility of
the government, which must ensure, by
law, that their children be exposed to
nothing unwholesome through any
medium.
Qmeeiu
The only positive side effect such a bill
might produce would be a reduction in
stores' stock of novels by Danielle
Steele, Sidney Sheldon, Judith Krantz
and their execrable lot.
LBlSl i urns booksellers into moral
administrators and bookstores into
sterile warehouses full of sealed pack-
ages. The bill bans the display of books
or magazines that are "harmful to
minors" in stores that allow minors to
enter. Apparently any work that "con
tains descriptions of nudity, sexual
conduct or sexual excitement" cannot
be displayed in public bookstores.
Of course this eliminates almost any
book of consequence, including most
books of paintings, the greatest novels
of the last 100 years and the edifice by
which all obscenity is judged, the
Bible.
That bills and court decisions like
these are once again slithering under
the foundations of the constitution and
gnawing away at the First Amendment
is enough to make the ACLU and most
progressive lawyers begin beating their
heads against jurisprudence like shell
shocked veterans. Once again, lawyers
have to pound away at the sketchy
definitions of obscenity and deal with
words like "evil," "unwholesome" and
"prurient interest" in a profession
built on specific facts and details, fhe
bills are passed and the judges gavel
the unconstitutional into being. Then
the decisions are tied up in legalese
from Tennessee to Oregon, wasting the
world's time for the benefit of those
who want the complexity of the uni
verse, of a single human life even, in a
inanageraole nutshell.
A nutshell made of ice. And with all
things frozen and children's minds
rendered inoperable, the world will be
simple, and the sexual act and the
physical universe will be reduced to
gfunting in the dark like animals lor
the sake of procreating more souls
made of solid ice.
The only iiglu will come from the
burning of books, afire colder than the
kiss of Vicki Frost itself.
hieurance is a senior Knlish, philo
sophy and ail major and Daily .Nt-bras-kan
senior reporter.
Another example of this attitude is
the controversy surrounding the book
"When The Sky Begins To Roar" by
Alice Bach. Although many educators
find this book truthful and well-written,
a group of Lincoln parents has taken
action to have the book removed from
public-school libraries, because of its
graphic depictions of real problems
that young people face today.
In today's society children will be
forced to make choices about sex,
drugs, alcohol and crime.
The Beasties Boys' show illustrated
that few parents are willing to give
their children this help, even to the
simple extent of listening to a hit song
and saying, "1 don't think you're ready
for this. I don't want you to go." These
people want the government to do this
job for them, even if it means depriving
older or more mature individuals of a
pleasant evening's entertainment.
I think a parent would have better
luck with an approach like: "This song
is about rebelling because sometimes
parents are hypocrites. Do you think
I've asked you to do anything which is
hypocritical? If you think I'm being a
hypocrite, let's talk about it. Promise
me you'll come and talk to me if you
ever want to do something dangerous
or illegal like drinking or taking drugs."
I know it's not easy to be a parent. I
know this because I wasn't easy to
raise. I do not envy you parents all your
work and pain. But monitoring your
child's entertainment is yourjob. Yours
and nobody elses. Please do it.
McCubbin is a senior English and philo
sophy major and Daily Nebraskan Div
ersions editor.
