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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 17, 1987)
Editorial_ _ • m a Nebraska n University ot Nebraska-Lincoln Mike Reilley, Editor, 472-1766 Jeanne Bourne, Editorial Page Editor Jen Deselms, Managing Editor Mike Hooper, Asstxyiate News Editor 1 Scott Harrah, Night News Editor Joan Rezac, Copy Desk Chief Linda Hartmann, Wire Editor Narrow lobbying focus Reunion with NSSA may dilute lobbying By reuniting with the Ne braska State Student Association, the Uni versity of Nebraska-Lincoln would dilute its lobbying power in the Legislature and contradict the wishes of UNL students. ASUN will vote Wednesday night on whether UNL will re join NSSA, a statewide student lobbying group. ASUN mem bers attended a non-member NSSA meeting last weekend in Wayne. NSSA asked for input on how to rewrite its constitution and changing its name as well as offering non members a chance to join. UNL shouldn’t join a state wide group, but rather concen trate on its own lobbying efforts. The university has reached a crisis situation as far as faculty salaries and funding for pro I grams. It needs to worry about itself. Furthermore, as NSSA struggles to survive, UNL could be jumping on a sinking ship. The group has had three direc tors in the last year, and Peru State College dropped its mem bership last week. And how soon we forget about NSSA’s failures. Just last year, NSSA members argued and cried during a meeting in Peru. One representative went so far as to resign. Dan Hofmeister, a UNL rep resentative to NSSA at the time, described the meeting as a “par liamentary disaster.” And just last spring UNL stu dents overwhelmingly voted to stop allocating 50 cents of their fees to NSSA. The $20,000 the NSSA lost was reallocated to the Government Liaison Com mittee, UNL’s student lobbying group. ASUN senators voted 17-13 last year to eliminate funding for NSSA, thus severing ties with the organization. Granted, NSSA has prom ised to make changes in its constitution that will diversify the organization. One of the changes, proposed by lobbyist Shawn Ilg of GLC, is to replace ; the Legislative Assembly with an executive commission to examine recommend policy to the Board of Directors. UNL would have even less power in the commission than it did last year. Under the new structure, the commission will have four members from each school. In the past, the number of members depended on the size of the school, and UNL had 27 members last year. UNL students and ASUN made a commitment to its own lobbying group last year. GLC hasn’t even had a chance to operate on its own. The UNL group has already started sev eral strong programs, such as attracting state legislators and lobbyists to speak to students. Besides, having two lobby ing groups would decrease UNL’s impact on the Legisla ture. Senators would be scratch ing their heads, wondering which group to listen to. The groups could form different opinions or solutions on issues and contradict each other. For example, one thing UNL and UNO disagreed on last year was the possibility of voting stu dent members on the NU Board of Regents and State Board of Trustees. Those who opposed the idea, mainly students from Wayne State and UNO, argued that student board members neither have the time to under stand the issues affecting their schools nor the experience to make intelligent votes. But UNL has fought for years for a student-regent vote. After all, who knows what’s good for the student body than the stu dents themselves? To expound further, UNL is a separate institution than the other members of NSSA. The university already stands alone, and pulling it under a separate umbrella would do nothing more than cause confu sion. Living geography leads to cultural understanding The United States is a nation of illiterates — including ignorance of geography. A national survey of high school seniors showed: • 25 percent of Dallas stu dents didn’t know Mexico was the country directly south of the United States. • 63 percent of students in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area couldn’t name all seven conti nents. • 40 percent of Kansas City students couldn’t name even three countries in South Amer jCa To shed light on this prob lem, Congress has designated this week as “Geography Awareness Week.” This ignorance of geography illustrates Americans’ ethno centrism in its extreme. It also represents the state of our educa tion system. If people in Dallas, Texas, a state that borders Mexico, don’t know what country is directly south, we should know we’re in trouble. If people learn about geogra phy, their interest could con tinue into learning about other cultures as well. A better grasp of other societies can only lead to tolerance and understanding. :3 i . ... Dating habits reflect materialism Singles complain about society's shallow traditions, expectations We live in a material and su perficial society. We can buy status through symbols, buy friends, and some people say money can buy you love. This is espe cially evident in our dating habits. Several men have complained to me lately that they arc tired of money hungry women who say, “Nice to meet you, what kind of car do you drive?” I’ve also heard numerous com plaints from women who think men expect sexual favors after paying fora date. Jeanne Bourne It seems even in these equalitarian, enlightened ’80s, confusion runs rampant in the dating arena. The problems stem from different expectations and values. Women traditionally have valued in husbands economic security. Their expectations were to be “taken care of’ for life. Men, on the other hand, have traditionally valued attractive women who would provide sexual and homcmaking duties. But these values are changing now. We have passed the virgin-until marriage stage of the 1940s and ’50s and the free-love stage of the ’60s and entered the stage of confusion. Dating has become a game that requires all the strategies and plan ning of any business deal. A common strategy for a first date is to “do lunch.” It is less threatening and less expensive than dinner. It is also easier to make excuses if it is not working out. How could you use the old “I've gota2o’clock appointment” on a Saturday night? The first date is a crucial time. Couples reveal what they arc looking for and decide for themselves if this could possibly work into a relation ship. While men usually sum up the possibilities by looking at the woman’s body and sometimes by getting a feel for their personality, women often pry into financial de tails. Some women openly admit they want financial security, first and fore most, in a man. A generation ago, mothers were telling their daughters “It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one.” And if the man was too short, “Stand him on his money, he gets taller.” One of my friends told me the most blatant and rudest example of this “material girl” mentality. He met a woman at a Laundromat. They hit it off very well. They were talking, laughing and having a great time until she asked him what he did. He told her he was a graduate student. The con versation stopped abruptly and she went back to her laundry. After some thought, my puzzled friend asked her what happened. “Graduate students have no time and no money,” she said. I think women who date merely for economic gain or security arc simply prostituting themselves. It seems some men have accepted this silly idea that they must have money to please women. But some take that too far, thinking that if they have money, they can get any woman. For example, at the first and only fraternity party I attended, I struck up a conversation with a young man. After I refused his “offer,” he pro ceeded to tell me about the banks and companies his family owned. It seemed he was trying to persuade me to reconsider by telling me what I would be missing. These men who flaunt their money to get dates are merely looking for a bargain. They will get what they pay for. The question of “who pays?” is still a problem. Some women tend to take advan tage of society’s expectation that men pay. I’ve known women who play a game by going to bars with only a few dollars. They make bets with their friends to see how many drinks they can get without paying. But other women have told me they feel obligated at least to talk with a man who buys them drinks. It seems some men feel the same way. One recent Friday afternoon, I was waiting for some friends at my favor itc watering hole. A man approached me while I sat at the bar. We talked. 1 ordered another drink. He offered to pay. 1 declined. He insisted by saying, “You won’t owe me anything.” 1 knew that. I paid. Just by his mentioning that I would not owe him anything, I knew I would, at least in his mind. I don’t want to give the idea that chivalry equals chauvinism, because it does not, in all cases. But many dale rapes stem from this pressure of “obligation.” If women want equal treatment they must pay the price, even if it’s merely the price of dinner and drinks. Bourne is a senior news-editorial major W and Daily Nebraskan editorial page editor. ■ Warning sign truthfully labels Judge takes hint from soup cans a s we all know, this country /\ has a severe shortage of /m prison space. We have mil lionsof hotel and motel rooms, as well as empty condos and office buildings. But we don’t have enough cells to hold all of our head-crackers, throat cutters and fiends. This means that dangerous crimi nals are released early or not sent to jail at all because there’s no place to stash them. And that means the hostile characters are back on the streets, ready to do what they did before and looking for somebody to do it to. Mike Royko So judges must struggle with the problem of trying to protect society and punish criminals when there isn’t really any way they can do it. Recently an Oregon judge came up with an imaginative solution to this problem. Judge Dorothy Baker had a real creep on her hands—a guy with a long history of sexually molesting chil dren. The creep, Richard Bateman, had been convicted of sodomizing a little girl almost 10 years ago and did a stretch in prison. When he recently came before Judge Baker, it was for having as saulted two children, a boy and a girl, both 5 years old, during the same week. He pleaded no contest, which meant the judge could send him to prison for several years. But she knew that if she did that, he’d be out in almost no time because the prisons didn’t have room for him. < * «<MI tf ft I ttftftttt1 There would be other creeps standing in line for his cell space. She also considered the fact that he had flatly refused to take part in a program that tries to rehabilitate grown men who like to have sex with children. So she sent him to jail for a short lime and gave him five years of proba tion. But she tacked on a special provi sion in the sentence. She said that while he was on pro bation, he would have to have a sign posted on his front door that said: "Dangerous sex offender. Nochildren allowed.” And he would have to have the same sign on the doors of any car he drove. As she said at the time: “I had thought about labeling these people some way, that it’s too bad people don’t know who they are. You can’t dye them green. The signs made sense to me.” A few days ago, Bateman began his probation. But there are no signs posted. I hat’s because Bateman is indig nant. A sensitive soul, he doesn’t see why he should be singled out for public humiliation. His lawyer is in dignant and has appealed the punish ment to the higher courts, which arc going to ponder it for a while. And, of course, the American Civil Liberties Union is indignant and has jumped into this case. It says the signs are not only cruel and unusual punish ment, but they violate an international treaty on how prisoners should be treated. In general, I like the ACLU. I even have an award on a shelf at home that the AC LU once gave me for some thing or other. But every so often, the ACLU sounds kind of nutsy. And this is one of those times. The ACLU said requiring Bateman the have s'gns on Ins tlours vio latcd the International Treaty on Human Rights, which forbids sen tences that are degrading, stigmatiz ing and vindictive and violate funda mental principles of human dignity. I don’t see what’s so degrading or vindictive about asking acarecr child molester to post a sign on his door warning kids to stay away from him. We’re executing people at a rapid rale in this country. If you want to talk about vindictiveness, sending a few thousand volts of electricity through somebody’s body — that’s really vindictive. I would ask the ACLU officials — would you rather have Bateman pant ing into your ear or have a sign tacked to his door? What would they consider to be the greater indignity? In fact, I kind of like the idea the judge had to reject — dyeing creeps like Bateman green. But this would never be permitted by the higher courts. We no longer believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth lor a tooth. Today, the rule is a fingernail clipping for an eye, a small lull ol hair for a tooth. And you can bet that when the appeals court in Oregon rules, it will decide that it is cruel and unusual to subject Bateman the creep to the in dignity of having a sign on his door saying that he is a creep. Under our various truth-in-label ing laws, a can of soup must list eve rything in it Prices must be clearly marked. Cigarette packages must bear the obvious information that they re bad for us. But under our laws, it’s an indig nity for a guy who pounces on little children to be labeled as exactly what he is. When was the last lime a can ol soup messed up a little kid’s entire life? . I. Koyko Ls u Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist fur the Chicago Tribune. , W iv fo* .. » I M ft f 11 j n I C If M I t I I 111 I ft ft I * * IM t 11 » 1 »