Editorial_ —
Netnfskan
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Mike Reilley, Editor, 472-1766
Jeanne Bourne, Editorial Page Editor
Jann Nyffeler, Associate Neies Editor
Scott Harrah, Night News Editor
Joan Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
Linda Hartmann, Wire Editor
Charles Lieurance, Asst. A & E Editor
Finding UNL’s cure
Faculty benefits still below average
A $590,000 appropriation from
the Legislature has been a
shot in the arm for ailing
University of Nebraska faculty
salaries, but it’s still far from a
cure.
And university officials need
to find a remedy soon. College
deans and professors worry that
faculty turnover rates could
become a serious problem if
salaries aren’t raised and bene
fits not improved.
Officials need to look past the
dollar signs when dealing with
faculty. Although faculty members
are still grossly underpaid, the
university could keep them from
leaving and possibly attract new
members by focusing on improv
ing benefits.
First, the university could
lessen its tenure requirements.
Two instructors at UNL’s Teachers
College have left because they
couldn’t get tenure here but
could at other universities.
Also, expanding UNL’s intern
ship and fellowship programs
would attract new professors.
With more faculty members, class
loads would be lightened and
more time would be left for
research. By improving research
programs, more professors would
want to teach at UNL.
But money is still a hot issue.
According to the UNL Faculty
Salary Study Committee, UNL on
the whole pays its teachers $10
million less than other land
grant universities in the country.
So far, the money appropriated
by the Legislature last summer
has been used well. Raises have
been confined to full-time faculty
members who do not hold admini
strative positions and whose
performance ranked in the upper
half of their college. The merit
system will motivate faculty to
work harder, thus improving the
quality of education.
Lines to shorten
Computers speed aid
A computer system soon will
shorten lines in the Finan
I cial Aid and Scholarship
Office, but not soon enough for
those now waiting and office
workers who are now using a
manual file system.
Fart of the system was installed
this summer, but most of the
work will still be done by hand
until it is fully automated in the
1988-1989 school year.
A "tracking screen” being used
this fall tells workers what
financial aid forms a student has
turned in and tells whether the
student has completed all the
forms necessary or if they have
been returned to the student.
A "message screen” logs in
formation about Guaranteed Stu
dent Loans. It keeps current
records about when the applica
tions was processed, the loan
amount and when the check
came in. This information had
been tracked by hand from thou
sands of student files. Now, when
students go in the office with
questions, they can be answered
quickly and efficiently.
Other benefits of the fully
automated system include ear
lier award notificiation of scho
larships and faster location of
qualifiers for specific scholar
ships.
When William E. McFarland,
director of the Office of Scholar
ships and Financial Aid, took the
position Jan. 19, he said, "Auto
mation is the key.”
"We need to ask for all we can
get,” he said.
The new computer system is a
good start for office efficiency.
Now, if we can get all we ask for
in financial aid funding.
Editorial Policy
Unsigned editorials represent
official policy of the fall 1987 Daily
Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily
Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its mem
bers are Mike Reilley, editor, Jeanne
Bourne, editorial page editor; Joan
Rezae, copy desk chief; Jann Nyffeler,
associate news editor, Charles Lieur
ance, assistant arts and entertain
ment editor; Scott Harrah, night
news editor and Linda Hartmann,
wire editor.
Editorials do not necessarily re
I__ ■ —- —
fleet the views of the university, its
employees, the students or the NU
Board of Regents.
The Daily Nebraskan’s puoiishers
are the regents, who established the
UNL Publications Board to super
vise the daily production of the
paper.
According to policy set by the
regents, responsibility for the edi
torial content of the newspaper lies
solely in the hands of its student
editors.
The Fable of the Snowflake
Unenlightened teachers, Westerns and the truth about George
^ |TTT hy were we created
WJ only to suffer and to
▼ f die?"
—The Space Wa nderer
It takes a serious person to dabble in
the ludicrous. Brothers in torment who
can’t understand the rules of simple
passivity lose the game early and spend
a small eternity trying to catch up with
bliss.
My fourth-grade teacher told me
without a hint of a smile that no two
snowflakes were exactly alike.
“Prove it,” I said from the back of
the room, reading a Western novel
folded between covers of “Earth’s
Environment and You.”
“What?” she asked. She was rude for
a woman who had dedicated her life to
enlightening 9-year-old innocents.
"I said prove it,” I said, truly inter
ested in this impossible field trip.
She ran to the cupboard, grabbed
some construction paper and imme
diately started cutting out snowflake
after snowflake. In her exuberance to
prove the unprovable she held up paper
snowflake after paper snowflake, all
different shapes and sizes, saying “See,
see, I told you.” She threw them into
the air, all those paper snowflakes, and
they cascaded to the floor in a poor,
mock blizzard of stagnant education.
"Not good enough,” I said, warming
to the hideousness of the whole situa
tion. I closed my W'estern and stood up
slowly. "Are you trying to tell me that
out of all those zillions of tiny snow
flakes that have fallen since time
began that no two are exactly alike?"
"It’s true,” she said, “It’s always
been true."
‘‘Prove it then," someone else said. I
think it was Becky Kay. I’ve always
hoped it was.
Then someone else joined in, then
they all did, chanting "Prove it, prove it
»»
Miss Taylor stood there, in a puddle
of constructed truth, the movie star of a
teachers college bloodbath from hell.
Well, then, there it is. It’s been like
that ever since.
"I love you.”
‘‘Prove it."
Bill
Allen
At the beginning of this I quoted the
Space Wanderer, the literary creation
of Kilgore Trout, who himself was a
literary creation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Simon Wagstaff, the Space Wanderer,
travels the universe in search of the
answer to his primal question, “Why
were we created only to suffer and to
die?”
And in the end, he only gets laughed
at, a man trapped in his own sensitiv
ity, captured by the romanticism of
worthwhile existence.
But perhaps that trap is better than
being trapped inside a classroom of set
constructs ... a world where the only
answers are the ones everybody accepts.
Look around in lecture halls today as
professors stand up at the front of the
room and recite fact after fact or
explain concepts that are barely proven.
Do students challenge or even listen?
• No. They sit in their seats and read
Westerns or talk to one another in
whispered hushes that can be heard
about twice as far as a normal conver
sation could be.
If I was a professor, I would have
some fun.
First, I’d wait until I had to lecture
about something that the little ingrates
would find particularly boring, and
then I’d say:
"Aside from the appalling fact that
he owned slaves, George Washington
was a noted homosexual. Not many
people know that.”
I would pause, waiting for my state
ment to sink through the swishing
sound of a hundred tiny conversations.
One student looks up, perhaps closing
a Western. He looks at me quizzically
for a second, then shrugs and writes
the statement down. Another conquest
for modern education.
I remember back in the fourth grade,
sitting in the hall without my Western.
I was bored again. Elementary school
halls are pretty dull. It’s almost better
being inside learning statements you
can't accept. I listened in at the door.
"OK,” Miss Taylor said, “I can’t
prove it. But don’t worry. It’s not on the
test anyway.”
The class sighed, immediate relief
from the problems of the universe. 1 felt
used.
"Oh well,” Becky Ray said, walking
past after class, "You can’t live forever.’’
"I have so far,” I said.
And I have.
Alien is a graduate student and Daily
Nebraskan arts and entertainment
editor.
i
Waking up is hard to do
Windshield washing helps writers see through trivialities
There are some mornings so lousy
that we know the rest of the day is
going to stink.
This one began with nature as the
enemy in the form of a flooded base
ment. Nature is a frustrating enemy
because no matter how much you rant
and swear, it doesn’t listen.
Then came the writing of a check to
the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS
is a dangerous enemy because if you
rant and swear you might be audited
and have even more to rant and swear
about.
And before the morning was half
over, there was technology, an old and
hated foe. It took the form of a bridge
going up, then getting stuck and not
coming down for 30 minutes, trapping
thousands of us in our cars with nowhere
to go.
By the time the bridge lowered and
the traffic crept forward, I was hope
lessly late for an interview with a
source, my teeth were grinding and I
was sure the entire world was plotting
against me.
At the first opportunity, I caught a
red light. That got me even angrier.
Suddenly, water was being sloshed
across my windshield. At first, I didn’t
know where it was coming from.
Then I saw that a teen-ager had
stepped from the curb with one of
those gas station tools, a combination
sponge and squeegee, for cleaning
windshields.
And he got me mad, too. My wind
shield was already spotless, so why was
he cleaning it? Who asked him to? The
light might change and I could lose a
few more precious seconds.
Before he could use the squeegee, I
gave him an angry glare, waved him off
and turned on my wipers.
He stepped back on the sidewalk,
shrugged, shook his head slightly and
turned away.
About 16 and very skinny. His T-shirt
was a grimy gray, and his trousers
looked like the kind that might have
sold for $8 new a long time ago.
The light turned green and I drove
ahead. By the time I got to the next
corner, I realized what I had just done.
That wasn't one of my sons on a
comer, washing the windshields of
strangers’ cars, hoping some of them
would be generous enough to hand him
two bits. My sons never had to do
anything that demeaning to put a few
dollars in their pockets. They were
fortunate enough to have been bom
Caucasian Americans, with an overpaid
father.
And there 1 sat, in my big, black,
fat-cat car, with air-conditioning blast
ing, stereo playing and enough elec
tronic doodads to do everything but
blow my nose.
I had enough money in my pocket to
buy that skinny kid a suit, pay his
family’s rent for a month and maybe fill
up their refrigerator and pantry.
But 1 hadn’t had the decency to let
him squeegee the windshield, then
touch the button that lowers a window
and give him a buck and a smile. I had
given him a scowl and a wave-off,
gestures that said he was a nothing.
And all the while, do you know what
was playing on my stereo cassette?
Peter, Paul and Mary, singing that if
they had a hammer, they’d hammer out
love between their brothers and their
sisters, all over the world — that’s
what was playing.
While I’m telling some ghetto kid to
get lost.
Statistics ran through my mind.
What’s the teen age black unemploy
ment rate — 40 or 50 percent? And we
wonder why so many are into crime!
But here was a kid who wasn't
grabbing my hubcaps, smashing and
grabbing, mugging or heisting. All he
was doing was cleaning windshields
and hoping people like me might ap
preciate it.
Sure, it was a form of panhandling.
But with that sponge and squeegee, he
gave dignity to it. He was saying: “Look,
I’m trying to work, I’m doing some
thing.’’
And I tell him to bug off.
So 1 made a right turn at the next
corner, then another one. I figured I’d
double back and catch him a second
time, and this time I’d give him a
five-spot.
By the time I got back to the corner,
he was gone. Maybe he moved to
another corner. So I went around again,
tried a couple more streets. But l
couldn’t find him.
So I drove to the office and parked.
When I walked past my assistant, she
said, "Good morning.’’
I told her it was a lousy, stinking
morning.
Then I went into the men's room,
looked in the mirror and saw the
biggest reason for it being a lousy,
stinking morning.
1987 By The Chicago Tribune
Royko In a columnist for the Chicago
Tribune
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