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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 9, 1988)
Editorial Nebraskan University of Nebraska Mike Reilley, Editor, 472-1766 Diana Johnson, Editorial Page Editor Jen De selms. Managing Editor Curt Wagner, Associate News Editor Scott Harrah, Night News Editor Joan Rezac, Copy Desk Chief Joel Carlson, Columnist Dump site opposition Petition drive good idea, but too late Those who oppose putting a regional storage site for low-level radioactive waste in Nebraska have a valid point for their vindication. They officially launched a petition drive Friday to place the issue before voters. But the problem is that they ’re too late. The group officially launched a petition drive Friday to place the issue before voters. During a press conference at the Capitol, members for Nebraskans for a Right to Vote said they needed to gather 39’,510 signatures by July 7 to get the issue on the Novem ber ballot. The group wants Nebraska to withdraw from the Central Inter state Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission. The compact — which includes Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana — picked Ne braska last December as the site for its storage facility. The proposed law would withdraw Nebraska from the waste compact commission and would require voter approval of any radioactive waste storage in the slate. The above-ground vault will store contaminated clothing, equipment and tools used in nuclear power, research and medicine. Sam Welsch, the committee’s executive director, said he fears developers for the Central Inter state Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission will “cut comers” in developing the storage site. “They are going to want to site a facility as cheaply as they can, regardless of the health and safety risk of Nebraska citizens,” he said. Raymond Pecry, executive director and general counsel for the compact, said Thursday it could cost Nebraska as much as $81 million if the state leaves the compact. Pcery’s $81 million estimate included fines that could be lev ied against Nebraska for leaving the compact, the cost of Ne braska building its own storage site and the cost of building another site for the four remain ing compact states, as stipulated by its contract with the compact. The timing of the opponents’ outcry is poor. The group should have discussed its opposition to the compact before Nebraska was chosen. True, their point is well taken. Nebraskans should have a voice in the location of the waste sites, and the group’s fear that health standards may be compromised is a valid argu ment. But the opposition comes after the fact. The state certainly can’t afford an $81 million pen alty, although the cost in human lives may be more severe. Law studentsquestion columnist's loyalties In response to Joel Carlson’s col umn (Daily Nebraskan, Feb. 1) that attacked former Gov. and U.S. Senate candidate Bob Kerrey: Two ques tions, Joel. Was that column written by you during a lull period in your work at Sen. David Karnes’ re-elec tion campaign headquarters? Or was it merely written on Karnes’ stalion ery- Mark F. Krause Gary A. Goebel third-year law Students Editor's note: Carlson's column was written on the DN computer system. Housing resident questions value for cost I am writing this letter to voice some questions about what residence hall residents are getting for their money. Residence halls can be a convenient place for many students to live, but over the past four years, I’ve noticed several things which make me wonder if the University of Ne braska-Liocoln housing office really cares much about the welfare of the student resident. My first question relates to that pot-holed and muddy mess called the Harper/Schramm/Smith parking lot. I don’t think there is a single person whose car hasn’t been covered with gravel dust every week. I’m sureUNL officials don’t have to park their cars in a mud hole. They’re provided with real parking lots; students, who pay $45 for a parking permit, should have a real one too. This leads to another question. Where is that $45 per car going to? It certainly doesn’t go to insuring the safety of student vehicles. Because of poor lighting and a total lack of pa trolling, thousands of dollars in theft and damage occurred to cars parked in residence hall parking lots last semester alone. Apparently the UNL police are nothing but meter maids who do little more than write parking tickets. Perhaps that’s why they’re known as the “Campus Clowns.” Another question I have relates to a yearly ritual that UNL housing calls “room consolidation.” Under this policy, students whose roommates have moved out are sent a notice informing them of four options that housing has kindly provided for them: find someone to move in with you, move in with someone else, pay extra money to keep a single, or allow your residence director to assign you to a new room or give you a new room mate. What is the purpose of this policy? I have also noticed another curious phenomenon. Students pay $425 more in the first semester than the second. This payment schedule, in effect, cheats those students who, for some reason, choose to leave the halls after the first semester, out of more than $200. In fairness, shouldn’t all the payments be equal? In-conclusion, I hope this letter will lead to a constructive debate of these issues, and I invite UNL offi cials with responsibility in these areas to give hall residents some real an swers to these questions. Justin Evans senior business administration/economics Of capitalists and Contras YAF's Caution follows ex-communist s \isit w ith Falei o dinnei My first encounter with Lincoln’s Terrell Cannon was in 1983, when he was hawking a jaded Kruschcvite Polit buro refugee who’d seen the light of almighty capitalism and wanted to share that enlightenment w ith Ameri cans who might have become disen chanted with the system in the first foul years of Reaganomics. Cannon, a Lincoln lawyer who handles legal ins and outs and public relations for Nebraska’s Young Americans for Freedom, took this capitalist manque on ihe road to small Nebraska colleges under the guise of an objective lecture tour about the Soviet Union. Cannon knows how' to jump out of the way just before he loses his cool. He ushered the Soviet to the dais at Hastings College and introduced himself and then the Russian. The Russian wore my father’s suit, as if he were fresh in from a VFW meeting, complete with rhinestone-studded American (lag lapel pin. He looked more like a dyed-in-the-wool Repub lican God-fearing American than Ronald Reagan himself. Cannon introduced the whole af fair without ever mentioning.Young Americans for Freedom or hinting at the monstrous propaganda the Rus sian w as about to spew on the cagcr eyed Hastings College students w ho came to hear what Mother Russia was really like. The Russian spoke English like John Houseman, eloquently skirting the core of the speec h for more than 10 minutes. He explained the Soviet Union and how the Politburo worked as he saw it. But after 10 minutes, the rhetoric began to show' symptoms similar to the first stages of rabies. Cannon’s eyes, wedged in baby fat, darted around the room, making sure the students’ faces were off-guard enough that the Russian could pounce. There was even a moment of eye contact between Cannon and the Russian before the communist profli gate embarked on a scenario so bi zarre and heinous that even those students who might have had right wing leanings seemed shocked. Like a character out of “Dr. Strangelovc, the red, white and blue Soviet said his Mother Russia was at its weakest. He told the students the Soviet arsenal was depleted and obsolete and the Soviets have lied at every negotiating table, not to hide their strength, but to exaggerate it. If the United States struck with lull force today, the Russian said, it could easily annihilate the Russians with -——| T: minimal damage to major U.S. cities. It was horrifying that a Russian would stand up before a bunch ol duped college students advocating the utter destruction of his own home land and personally willing to sacri fice a few U.S. cities to see this deed accomplished. That Cannon was grinning like a vulture at Dachau over this suggestion was subhuman. That the audience was so numbed by the trappings of the event that they didn’t respond by laughing the two hyenas out of the room was beyond human comnrehension. A lew professors began ihe ques tion-and-answcr session when they saw that most of the students w ere too stunned to speak and Cannon was leaning forward, wailing. After the professors, who'd done their Nation magazine reading for the week, tried to knock the Russian oil his star-spangled high horse, a few students started in. One student be came almost as rabid as the Soviet, accusing Cannon of masquerading a fascist sing-along as an informational travelogue of the Soviet system. He asked the Russian again and again w hat sick pleasure he got out of call ing for the annihilation of his own land. The Russian said there were higher goals than patriotic national ism. Like world capitalism, the student presumed. Here Cannon kicked in. Nearly shoving the Russian outof the way, he barked that this student was proof that our society had decayed. He asked if maybe that student wouldn’t feel more comfortable eating borscht under the shadow of the hammer and sickle than attending an expensive small college in the heartland of America. The professors, good liberals all of them, resented this and began their “Now, hold on there a minute . . routine. Cannon was ready. The Rus sian was out of the way and the dais was his. He went on a tirade that turned his puffy checks the coior of Winesap apples, and then he grabbed the Russian and got the hell out of Hastings. This week, Cannon tried to pass off a Contra fund-raising binge as a wholesome political S25-a-plate sup per in the basement of Gov. Kay Orr's mansion. As a speaker, Cannon’s brownshirt Young Americans got Adolpho Calero, whose escapades with the Contras became famous during the Irangatc hearings. Part tw o of Cannon’s fascist world lour begins in Lincoln this Friday with Calero, a gray-haired Na/i bent on seeing Nica ragua safely back under a U.S backed dictatorship where he can make a buck or two and wear his rhinestone fine nin with imnunitv Orr claimed she'd never heard ol Calcro until a wise-guy reporter asked her why she was having a Contra fund-raiser in her basement without telling anyone. She then decided the event might be a little too controversial for the governor s mansion, and Cannon moved the fete to the Clayton House. It would be nice to think this was the first decent thing Orr had done since she took office, but unfortunately it was ignorance that paved the way to the decision. Calero and Cannon will begin Friday’s show with a speech at the McDonald Theater on the Nebraska Wesleyan campus at 10a.m., and then Cannon will begin touting him around until the fund-raiser. Let’s go out and greet them. I.ieurance is a senior Knglish major ami Daily Nebraskan arts and entertainment edi tor. No need to make up your mind when Reagan can do it for you Ijust haven’t been paying at tention anymore. I’m bored and frustrated because people refuse to realize that until God him self speaks out — given, of course, that you arc not an atheist — there will always be two arguable sides to abortion. But people continue to insist on their view point without listening and accepting another’s point of view. Maybe some people enjoy venting their anger. 1 am not into beating a dead horse into bloody pulp. Yet, here I am, sucked in by the issue against my will, but at least this time it’s a little bit different. Back in August, 1 remember read ing something about President Re agan proposing to stop abortion counseling in federally funded clin ics. I blew off the idea because it seemed obvious the regulations would be unconstitutional and dan gerous to women. “Congress would never let that happen,” I said to myself. But here it is February, and a USA Today headline screams, “Doctors call abortion advice ban ‘immoral.’” I caught my cheeks turning red again, like they used to when I was a newly awakened freshman, ready to argue again. “How the hell could this happen? Was Congress on a field trip? This couldn’t slip by without somebody noticing,” I said. I should have known the regula tions would slip through the system, without the consent of the American public for something much more important and life-threatening, like the federal budget. The regulations were all part of this year’s budget proposal. 1 knew that. What I didn’t know is that Reagan thought it his sole obligation to cut the number of abortions. So he tricked Congress by threatening to veto the budget if it tried to amend it and stop the regulations from going through. So Congress had to give in. And now 4.3 million women will be de nied their right to know all their op tions about their pregnancies. Imagine a woman sitting in her federally lunded doctor’s office, wearing a look of terror. The doctor says, “I’m sorry to say, Mrs. Brown, that you arc pregnant, but the zygote is caught in your Fal lopian tubes. If you have the child, you will die.” Mrs. Brown bursts into tears and says,“Bui Doctor, I don't wanttodie. Isn’t there something you can do?” “I'm sorry, Mrs. Brown,”he says, “That’s a secret. I’m not allowed to tell you what to do in your condition. It’s against the law.” Most people who oppose abortion would tell you that any decent doctor would never do that to a pregnant woman. Yet, when the new rules arc enacted in two months, the doctor won’t be able to say much. The rule defies one of the most important ethical rules in medicine: a patient’s right to informed consent. The American Medical Associa tion, the American College of Obste tricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics arc all against the rules, but nobody at the federal level seems to care much. The Planned Parenthood Federa tion of America and other family planning institutions have filed law suits against the new regulations, and I hope they will win. But if they don’t, the only thing women can hope for is that the issue get tied up in court until a new ad ministration comes along and re verses Reagan’s ridiculous rules. I guess it just doesn't matter what anyone says about abortion anymore. The decisions are being made for you. • Rood is a junior news-editorial niaj"r and a Dally Nebraskan news reporter.
