I WEATHER: Monday, partly ■ . . ,
cloudy and breezy with a 20 per* I iHSIO©"
cent chance of light showers. High ■
in the lower 70s. Monday night, ■ News Digest.Page 2
partly cloudy and cooler with pos- ■ Editorial.Page 4
sible evening sprinkles. Low in the ■ Sports.Page 6
mid- to upper 40§. Tuesday, partly I Entertainment....Page8
cloudy with a high in the upper ■ classified.Page 11
60s to lower 70s. ^ *
September 28, 1987 University of Nebraska-Lincoln Vol. 87 No. 23
DN, lawsuit appeal to be discussed
By Kip Fry
Staff Reporter _
The Nebraska Civil Liberties Un
ion will discuss this week whether to
appeal a high-court decision affecting
the Daily Nebraskan’s policy con
cerning stating sexual orientation in
classified advertisements.
John Taylor, NCLU executive di
rector, said Sunday that the NCLU’s
Board of Directors will have to decide
whether to appeal the decision by the
8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
NCLU is sponsoring the lawsuit,
I- '
which was filed in September 1985 by
two then-University of Nebraska
Lincoln students.
A three-judge panel ruled Friday
that the Daily Nebraskan could ref use
to publish “roommate wanted” adver
tisements that described the advertis
ers’ sexual orientation, according to
an article by The Associated Press.
The court upheld a previous deci
sion by U.S. District Judge Warren K.
Ur bom.
The Daily Nebraskan initially re
fused to run a classified advertisement
placed by two students requesting
homosexual roommates in the faU of
1984 because the ads were considered
discriminatory.
‘Editorial freedom of
expression has con
sistently prevailed. .
— Urbom
Pam Peam and Michael Sinn, then
members of the UNL Gay-Lesbian
Student Association, filed suit, con
tending that their First Amendment
rights of freedom of expression and
access to a public torum were denied.
The Court of Appeals made the
wrong assumptions about the way the
Daily Nebraskan is run, said Jerry
Soucie, an attorney representing
Pearn and Sinn. The fact that the
decision not to run the ads was made
by the Daily Nebraskan Publications
Board indicated that the newspaper
was not an independent publication.
Urbom ruled that the Daily Nebraskan
was editorially independent of the
state and functions like a private
newspaper.
In his decision, written in the
---1
summer oi iveo, uroom wrote, tun
torial freedom of expression has con
sistently prevailed where various
forms of censorship were applied to
student publications of stale-sup
ported universities. A university may
not suspend an editor for publishing
controversial articles; suppress objec
tionable material from publication;
withdraw or reduce financial support
because of the newspaper’s offensive
content; or regulate content to assure
the compliance of printed materials
with ‘responsible freedom of the
press.’”
City Mission
helps homeless
By Lisa Donovan
Staff Reporter
Michael said he has spent the
past 16 years of his life living day
to day.
“I’ve been everywhere,” he
said, “and it’s like one day I have
money, food and even a car, and
then some days I’ll just start in on
the alcohol and dope and stuff.”
Originally from Tennessee,
Michael has hitchhiked, ridden in
trains and sometimes driven a car
across me unueo aiaics wnne
doing what he calls “surviving.”
“I ran away from home when I
was 14 years old, and I have been
^on the streets consistently,” Mi
chael said.
M ichael, along with many of the
other homeless guests at the
People’s City Mission in Lincoln,
is just passing through.
“I would say that about 30 per
cent to 35 percent of the people
who stay here are from Lincoln at
any given time,” said Julie Red
dish, director of public relations
and volunteer coordinator at the
mission.
A United Way study on emer
gency shelters says: “There arc
about 100 more or less permanent
residents who use emergency fa
cilities regularly and at any given
lime; during the warm months
there may be another 300 transient
individuals in the community. In a
year’s time, as many as 1,500 tran
sients and indigent individuals
may pass through the community.”
The mission has been running
close to its capacity of 90 since
January when its new building
opened at 1 tuyM. me number 01
guests, however, fluctuates daily.
The mission provides room for
about 62 guests on the men’s shel
ter side, and 30 to 32 guests can stay
in the family shelter.
“We have people here who arc
traveling and end up with broken
down cars. We deal with child- and
spouse-abuse cases. We take in
transient men, if that’s what you
want to call them — we call them
guests here — and bag-lady types,
if you will,” Reddish said.
Angela and her fiance were on
their way from Chicago to Nevada
when her fiance’s bag with all of
his belongings and money was
stolen.
“We discovered it was missing
at a rest stop outside of Grand
Island,” Angela said. “Wc asked
around and some folks told us to go
back to Lincoln, so here wc arc.”
The two are staying at the mis
sion until they can save some
money. They both got “spot” jobs
through Catholic charities for the
See HOMELESS on 5
Paul Vonderlage/Dally Nebraskan
Beat from the books
Sally Vohland and Glen Wolta just can’t seem to keep up the concentration when it comes to business law. The duo
spent Sunday afternoon in the Nebraska Union hitting the books.
American policies criticized
ACLU official says covert operations don’t work in U.S.
By Anne Mohri
Staff Reporter
Covert operations don’t work in a
democratic society because Ameri
cans have the right to know what’s
going on in their political system, an
American Civil Liberties Union offi
cial said this weekend.
Morton Halpcrin, former deputy
secretary of defense and present ex
ecutive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union, cited the Iran-Contra
affair as the perfect example of a
covert operation gone bad, proving
that secrecy in the government does
not work effectively.
“Covert operations inevitably
breed lies,” he said. The government
starts out by lying to its opponents,
then to the public, then to Congress
and then to the general public, Halp
erin explained.
Halpcrin spoke Saturday at the
Nebraska Center for Continuing Edit
cation to about 50 people at a seminar
put on by the Nebraska Civil Liberties
Union.
“When intelligence scandals broke
in the mid-’70s, the ACLU debated
and adopted the position, saying that
covert operations were incompatible
with the kind of constitutional system
we have in this country,” Halpcrin
said.
Halpcrin said an example of lying
is President Ronald Reagan’s claim
that there was no truth to a story in a
Lebanese newspaper about former
National Security Council adviser
Robert McFarland and the sale of
arms to Iran.
“It was part of what the govern
ment becomes used to doing, comes to
think is legitimate to do, when it en
gages in a secret operation,” Halpcrin
said.
He said covert operations begin by
breaking the laws of other countries
and end by breaking the laws of the
United States. Halpcrin said diverting
funds to Nicaragua was wrong be
cause the Boland Amendment prohib
its the government from giving money
to Nicaragua without the consent of
Congress. “There is no way, in my
view, to square this circle, no way to
have covert operations,” he said. He
explained that the only solution to the
problem of secrecy in the government
was to return to the intent of the fra
mers of the Constitution.
“If you look at the Constitution, the
people that drafted it were concerned
that we not easily go to war or get
involved without public knowledge
and consent, and nothing is more at
war with that than covert operations,”
Halpcrin said.
Halpcrin also attacked Supreme
Court nominee Robert Bork’sconcep
tion of the Constitution.
Halpcrin said the ACLU’s biggest
complaint about Bork is that he be
lieves the most important liberty is the
liberty to impose one’s moral values
on others. Bork also believes that the
Constitution supports this theory, he
said.
Halpcrin said Bork thinks the only
rights arc those rights “specifically
enumerated” by the Constitution. His
view, Halpcrin said, is that those
rights not enumerated in the
Constitution do not exist.
“And he literally says the court
should ignore the Ninth Amendment
because nobody car. figure out what it
means,” Halpcrin said.
Bork’s concept greatly limits the
role of the Supreme Court toenforcing
only those rights specifically enumer
ated by the Constitution, he said. “To
do more, Bork said, would be to de
stroy liberty in America because the
most important liberty is the liberty of
the state to impose moral values,”
Halpcrin said.
