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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 9, 1987)
Thursday, April 9, 1987 Page 4 Daily Nebraskan Editorial - r , , , , 1 ' . NeSfiaskan University ol Nebraska-Lincoln When all else The strangest things turn up in the Daily Nebraskan mailboxes, things that some times shouldn't but somehow end up finding themselves here. The latest is a letter to Athletic Director Bob Devaney from Robert Furgason, vice chancellor for academic affairs. Apparently the Central Planning Committee is a little concerned about unautho rized parking in the area north of the Baumann Baseball Building. So concerned that they referred the issue to the Parking Advisory Committee in October 1985. On February 25, 1986, the Parking Advisory Committee unanimously disapproved this area for park ing. The letter read that in spite of these actions, it appears that the area is still being used for ongoing parking by those asso ciated with the baseball pro gram, and perhaps others. Unless our calculations are wrong, the baseball team and perhaps others have been violat ing the parking committee's decision for more than a year. The funny part is that a large parking area exists directly across the street from the Baumann Building. The DN estimates that distance at about 20 to 25 extra steps or a short pop fly. Our recommendation to the Parking Advisory Committee is to tow all cars parked illegally. This would quickly eliminate the problem as well as reduce the number of cars acjacent to the building. O The Daily Nebraskan re ported yesterday that the Long view Development Corp, in Savan nah, Ga., recently bought 12.8 acres near Memorial Stadium to build a recreational and parking Letter Taxpayers shouldn't As a full-fledged taxpayer of this state I feel that if "older and mature individuals" such as Chris McCubbin were not subsidized through college with my tax dollars they would have to work for an education and living and would not have time for a "pleasant evening of garbage." If his money had to be spent for tuition instead of Beastie Boys trash, maybe I as a parent wouldn't have to come home after a hard day at work and censor all the b.s. today's college stu dents are propagating as their civil rights. All these events are just promo tions for free love and sexually trans mitted diseases. If this is all that is important to you, don't cry when we 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. .Irll Korlu'lik, Editor, 4TJ l?(( .lames Kneels. Editorial I'aye Editor Use Olson, Associate Netrs Editor Mike Keilley, iijht Xeirs Editor luaii Kezae, Co pi Desk Chief fails, tow area. The area is tentatively named "Cornhusker Park." Harry Kitchen, vice president of Longview Development, said the park would provide a 195 space parking project suitable for tailgate parties on football Saturdays. He said the Husker fans can purchase spaces for $10,900 each and has 25 letters of intent to buy spaces already. The twist here is that Long view will be able to reap benefits from the football program, but at the same time provide an attrac tive area to the city. Right now the area is part of a railroad yard. O The Daily Nebraskan would like to encourage the NU Board of Regents to approve the lease agreement with Cormack Enter prises, Inc., that will bring Burger King into the Nebraska Union. This is a Burger King campus. O The sports betting bill the Daily Nebraskan endorsed a couple of weeks ago is still alive in the legislative process and has a good chance of surviving. On a 21-21-3 vote senators did not give first-round approval of a bill that would legalize sports betting. But the bill, LB757 sponsored by Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, will remain in the general file. But Chambers said that since the bill is a priority bill it will come up again for a vote to pass it on to select file. If it passes there, it will go on to final read ing where senators will again vote on it. Finally, the bill would go to Gov. Kay Orr for her approval. If the bill has made it this far, chances are it will go farther and if you're a sports betting enthu siast, the news has to be good. subsidize U. of Sex taxpayers ask for more cuts. I don't feel like subsidizing your pleasure. As a '60s college student, I believe it is time for these "older and mature" college students of the '80s to get out of the bedroom and join the real world. Why not get out and solve some of its problems, like the fight against AIDS, and stop being a big part of the prob lem of sexually transmitted diseases. You might be able to fool some peo ple with your '60s wardrobe of torn jeans and jean jackets, but you can't fool all of us, because we had to wear them and couldn't afford a Porsche to go with them. Mel Masek Omaha Letters and guest opinions sent to the newspaper become property of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be returned. Anonymous submissions will not be considered for publication. Letters should include the author's name, year in school, major and group affiliation, if any. Requests to withhold names from publication will not be granted. Submit material to the Daily Ne braskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1 400 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68388-0448. DM editorial colraanist tambled Rogers sees nothing but tracks as he "Hallol" said Piglet, "What areyou doing!" "Hunting" said Pooh. "Hunting whatT "Tracking something" said Winnie-the-Pooh, very mysteriously. "Tracking whatl" said Piglet, coming closer. "That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, 'WhatT " "What do you think you'll an swer?' " shall have to wait until I catch up with it" said Winnie-the-Pooh. "Now there" he pointed to the ground in front of him. "What do you see there!" "Tracks" said Piglet. A. A. Milne What am I tracking? I mean, in the big sense. The question, so grossly overpopular in the 70s, appears rather trite under the glare of the '80s. Yet here I am, in my mid-20s, finishing a nine-year stint at UNL, (five years undergraduate, four years law and graduate) and planning to start a doctoral program at an Eastern school come fall. I've already spent more time in school than I originally hoped I would. So what am I tracking? The question seemed to be answered so simplyjust a scarce few years ago in my near youth fulness. "I shall become a poohfessor," I thought, "poohfessors are on the track of something." At the time I thought of the journey more as an arrival. For example, I recall walking down the enclosed mall at Gateway before Christmas of my sopho more year. I looked closely at the faces bustling past me, looking for a glint of recognition. No, not personal recogni Feminists upset by Baby M verdict; defeat caused by previous triumphs The verdict on Baby M is in and it was a rout. In a New Jersey court, father Stern was awarded hill cus tody of the child. "Surrogate" mother Mary Beth Whitehead was utterly cut off from her baby. For some feminists, the decision was a stunning defeat. It has "frightening implications for women," said Betty Friedan, author of "The Feminine Mystique." "The com plete dehumanization of women." Many feminists had lined up with Mary Beth Whitehead. And during the trial, more than a hundred signed a statement expressing sympathy with her position and outrage at the way she had been treated during the trial by the Stern's psychiatric "experts." Ironically, however, Whitehead's position was undermined by two cherished and now widely accepted feminist principles. The court's verdict represents, in fact, a perverse triumph of feminist ideology. Judge Harvey Sorkow's decision was a decision in two parts. Each has sound feminist roots. First, he ruled that the surrogacy contract was valid. White head's lawyer had argued that it was not. Is it not as exploitative, degrading and thus illegal a practice as selling one's whole body (slavery) or parts of one's body (say, a kidney)? But feminists have tenaciously and successfully argued that women should have control of their own bodies. If they should have the right to termi nate the life of a fetus, how can they be denied the right to grow one for a fee? Having won the battle for unfettered "reproductive rights," feminists can hardly argue that some black-robed judge should deny to surrogate mothers the freedom to exercise those rights as they wish. The second part of the court's ruling determined who was the more fit par ent. It is the kind of decision one would make in an ordinary custody fight. And until about 10 years ago, the mother tion of me by one of the passersby, rather I was trying to see if I recognized even a glint of identification with the lives of those scurrying past. It came as something of a revelation to me that I had utterly no understand ing of how those people could live as they did. I don't think the term "con tempt" would be too strong a term to apply to what I felt toward those peo ple. "How dare they live so unreflec tively," I recall thinking. Jim Rogers I hadn't yet learned the lesson which I later did from some of Thomas Mann's stories. At that time, I desired to cut a tragic figure. "Oh woe is me, woe is me," I would romantically picture myself saying, "so, oh, so along. . . .damned to be so reflective." What pathos I conjured up for my figure. Several years later, I came to under stand Mann's provocative themes rid iculing the will to cut a tragic figure. I came to view the earlier time as one in which I gratuitously wallowed in the cesspool of my own putrid will. My will to Romanticism so fouled the air of my pathetically tiny universe that I sought cleaner air among those whom I had contempt for only a few years before: The bourgeoisie. It was only by the grace of God. The answer to the question of why the movement, in a positive sense of embracing the bourgeoisie, is some what more difficult than answering why I absented my stinky little world. I suppose that the answer lies in that for all the faults of the common man, at almost invariably won. She won because we had this primitive notion of a mat ernal instinct (even the phrase now seems quaint) or maternal bond that made the mother, by nature, a more nurturing parent. For fathers to win cus tody, they had to produce overwhelm ing evidence against the mother. Charles Krauthamifiu This extraordinary presumption in favor of the mother held for a very long time, until fairly recently. One might say, until around the time of the great "Kramer vs. Kramer" case (starring Meryl Streep, now a signer of the statement sympathizing with White head.) Why the change? In large part, because of feminist success in defeat ing the idea that biology is destiny and promoting the idea that, in child rearing, father can and should be as much a nurturer as mother. In the brave new world of equal parenting, the father should then logically have an equal claim to custody. "I don't want the primacy of biology to triumph," said Ms. magazine editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin (another signer). "I'm suspicious of anything that uses the 'maternal instinct.' " Pre-feminism, "maternal instinct" would have counted a lot for a mother in a custody fight. And in surrogacy custody fights, the mother can use it. Take away the idea of the biological supremacy of the mother and what happens? The class supremacy of the father will allow him to win nine times out of 10. Which parent, after all, will be able to offer the better home? The deck is looks to the future least he is doing; this man (male and female) is constructing, and merits my own efforts to be used in their behalf (which is not to say I have much to contribute to those I now call, without false modesty, my betters). I had originally sought the ivory tower (99 and 44-100ths percent pure) so I could sit in a cushy chair with other blood suckers and lob a stone or two, every now and then, into the cen ter of society, hoping to hit whatever modest edifice was being constructed and stir those up who dared to con struct without my express counsel. Now I desire to contribute, as best my quite modest talents will allow, to the construction process. I still seek to enter the academy, but remain loyal to the doers (as many poohfessors are). But such ajourney requires more effort and uncertainty than that of the would be critic who has "arrived." In a phrase, during my days here at UNL I have become quite conservative, in the broadest sense of the term (which is its only true sense). Conser vatism is a lifestyle; it is not and cannot be a political ideology per se. It is a lifestyle that is explicitly theocentric and committed to social construction as a social act. Conservatism is an entire human expression. (Subsequent ly, it is destroyed by ostensibly friends who only seek to make it fit a political agenda) I've learned from those humble doers I dismissed with contempt several years ago, and hope to learn more about life from those that do life. If the question is, "what am I track ing," my response is, "I see tracks." Rogers is a graduate economics and law student, and Daily Nebraskan editor ial page editor. stacked. He is in a position to pay for the luxury of a family. He is thus likely to be rich, stable and secure. She is being paid for the risk and burden of carrying a child for nine months and for the anguish of separation at birth. She is thus likely to live in narrow and strained circumstances. It is true that Mary Beth Whitehead was a particularly unattractive test case. But it is in the nature of the surrogacy transaction to attract White heads. The rich and stable do not rent their wombs. Mrs. Whitehead did not lose Baby M to Mr. Stern because he is a man and she is a woman. She lost because Mr. Stern is a chemist and Mr. Whitehead is a garbage collector. It gives me no particular joy to see the feminists confounded. In fact, I was rather shocked by the judge's verdict, ferocious and final as it was. I find the forced separation of mother from infant for the purposes of enforcing a contract an appalling spectacle. A mother, even a "surrogate" mother, should have the choice after birth of keeping her child, as she would in an ordinary adoption case. But the Baby M case is a caution. This is not the first time that feminist victories have come back to haunt. In the early days, the women's movement was instrumental in advancing the cause of freedom of sexual self-expression. Now 20 years later, many fem inists are fighting the plague of porno graphy, which thrived in the more tolerant moral and legal climate they helped create. The women's movement is not the first liberation movement to be dismayed by the fruits of its own successes. Nevertheless, the Baby M case is only a particularly sad and stark example of the law of unintended consequences. 1S87, Washington Post Writers Group Krauthammer is a senior editor for the New EepubUc.