T Fditnriai • Ne&an
’ JL_J Vi. A. I V/ X. l(vll Wednesday, March 16,1988
Nebraskan
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Mike Rcillcy, Editor, 472-1766
Diana Johnson, Editorial Page Editor
Jen Desclms, Managing Editor
Curt Wagner, Associate News Editor
Chris Anderson, Associate News Editor
Joan Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
Joel Carlson, Columnist
Nation lacks nurses
Legislature could lower RN deficit
Nebraska’s Legislature
could have taken the
first step this year to
eventually reverse a dangerous
nursing shortage in the state, a
job the medical community
should be undertaking.
Unfortunately, the Health
and Human Services Commit
, tee did not advance LB 1185,
the Nursing Student Assistance
Act, out of committee earlier
this session, but it would do
well to reintroduce and pass it
next session.
Sen. Arlene Nelson of Grand
Island, who introduced
LB 1185, said the bill would
alleviate a projected shortage of
at least 7,800 nurses in Ne
braska by 1990.
Southeast Nebraska and the
Panhandle am critical shortage
areas.
These shortages are; not na
tive to Nebraska, according to a
special report in the March 14
issue of Time magazine.
The Time article stales that
growing numbers of the United
States’ 2 million registered
nurses arc leaving the field.
Time also states that, since
1983, enrollment in nursing
schools has dropped 20 percent
to less than 200,000 students.
The shortages, hcalth-carc
professionals say, result from
Icss-than-honorablc ireatmcnt
of nurses by the medical com
munity.
Most registered nurses eam
$21,000 their first year, and 30
ycar veterans eam less than
$30,000.
Because they arc under
staffed, hospitals routinely re
quire 50- and 60-hour work
weeks for nurses, sometimes
working them to the point of
exhaustion.
These factors and others cre
ate a potentially dangerous situ
ation in many of the nation’s
hospitals. Some medical pro
fessionals say understaffing
and other problems often com
promise patient cam.
The medical community also
must change the role of regis
tered nurses.
According to Time, a regis
tered nurse’s duties range from
starting intravenous drug lines
and bathing patients to answer
ing telephones and taking out
the garbage.
Secretaries should be hired
to do paperwork and answer
phones, and medical techni
cians can administer medica
tion after a nurse’s approval of
the dosages.
The medical community
can’t rely on nursing schools to
recruit more young nurses, but
must make the nursing profes
sion more attractive to young
nurses.
Also, the medical commu
nity must attract more nurses
through higher salaries and re
tain veteran nurses with incen
tives such as raises.
Here s where the medical
community can follow the
Legislature’s lead, if the uni
cameral decides to take the ini
tiative.
Under LB 1185, the state
would defer repayment and in
terest of loans if a nursing stu
dent becomes a registered nurse
and works in a Nebraska area
short of nurses after gradu
ation.
In order to qualify for the
proposed nursing student assis
tance in Nebraska, a student
would have to work one year in
a shortage area for each year the
money is borrowed.
The state would loan up to
$3,000 a year at 5 percent inter
est, up to a maximum of
$12,(XX).
If the Legislature passes this
bill, it could ignite the medical
community to enact much
needed reforms and solve short
age problems.
Maybe then nurses, enough
nurses, can get back to saving
peoples’ lives.
Are UNL students ‘victims’ or ‘losers’?
The University of Ncbraska-Lm
coln, if not the rest of the nation,
appears adrift in linguistic lunacy
where fact gives way toopinion. That
this may also be a national phenome
non was evidenced on National Pub
lic Radio when a commentator noted
that Gary Hart and Jack Kemp were
“victims” in last Tuesday’s primary
elections.
Here was a ease of linguistic idi
ocy. Hart and Kemp were not “vic
tims”; they were simply losers.
To be a “victim” suggests inno
cence, lack of informed choice, gulli
bility, even ignorance.
Recently, the DN ran an editorial
column suggesting there are no sig
nificant differences between an edu
cation at Nebraska and at Harvard.
Predictably, a UNL administrator
wrote to the DN lauding the students’
r. “pcrceptiveness.” Given the struc-.
; riigal realities of higher education —
v> die very teal jolvp^cments of
tv the graJuaies of the nation’s leading
c Tgwversitiesrfsuch as Harvard)— such
editorial? and letters do only one
thing: undermine the meaning of
language.
A professor wrote to the DN cor
rectly chiding a previous letter for
failure to comprehend the basic facts
of racial injustice in American soci
ety. Such facts, the professor ob
serves, fail to spark the intellectual
interest or effective concern of Ne
braska students. But how can they
when students today use language to
blur—if not obliterate — the distinc
tion between factand ill-formed opin
ion?
We have now in Lincoln an institu
tion with “students” who appear to
think t here is no racial discrimination,
who think that the women’s revolu
tion has been “won,” and who think
Nebraska stands head and shoulders
with the likes of Harvard. Given the
present linguistic confusion in which
such absurdity is partially rooted, I
..can’t decide befeM&n Appropriate
adjectives. Are at
Nwn&ska “loser
R Hill
Abctbral candidate
sociology
f - =a
WHY vo I
WORK. TWtSE
EXTRA UOhAGr
Hours . . .
FOR UTTLE I
PAY AND NO
RECOGNITION!
?? ?
; • *
The 1980s are officially over
Being lost in yesteryear is one fad that should definitely pass
Although 21 months must
pass before we’re in the
1990s, the 1980s arc basi
cally over.
For the first time in ages, a decade
has been tossed into a lame-duck
period, a transitory state, whatever
you want to call it. Unless something
significant and original arises soon,
we may as well forget the next year
and a half and prepare for the ’90s.
Last year, I complained about the
“retro’ trend — the resurgence of
1960s music and 1950s values. But
that’s all 1 thought it was — a trend.
But the “retro” trend has become
much more than a passing, ephem
eral fad. In the 1970s, the resurgence
of '50s culture was harmless and
cute, albeit annoying. The same
could have been said about ’60s re
vivalism in the ’80s, but as we glorify
remakes of old songs and don tie-dye
clothes, we forget something: It’s
impossible to raise the dead.
The last three or four years of a
decade are supposed to be the apex of
a culture’s identity, but instead we
walk around in a catatonic state, lost
in yesteryear. One would have
thought that by 1988, retroactivity
would have passed and, finally,
something new would’ve come
along. But the past continues to ob
sess us.
Just hx)k ai Iasi summer’s 20th
anniversary of San Francisco’s
“Summer of Love.” The media
bombarded the public with reminis
cent nostalgia about how glorious it
was back in Haight-Ashbury in l%7.
As people re-enacted “love-ins,”
meditated in Golden Gate Park for
the press and worshiped the release of
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club
Band,” did anyone lake the time to
enrich the summer ol 1987? People
seemed to be more concerned about
how summer was 20 years ago than
how summer could be in the present.
Retroactivity is dominating more
than pop culture, as the letters on the
Daily Nebraskan editorial page can
attest. Why has it taken us so long to
debate the evils of racism and homo
phobia? Have we suddenly discov
ered civil rights? Or did Reagan’s
reign erase any social progress we
made, forcing us to relive human
rights activism as his influence
wanes?
Perhaps if we’d really imitated the
’60s, we would have stood up forcivil
rights early in the decade and there
would already be equality amend
ments to protect all minorities.
The resurgence of arch-conscrva
livc values has almost destroyed the
1988 presidential campaign. It seems
that we’re more interested in a
candidate’s sex life than his or her
credentials. The scandals were hu
morous at first, but the laughter has
died and now there’s nothing left but
candidates with their pants down,
allowing us to glimpse every trivial,
sordid thing they’ve done.
-1-b
The 1960s revivalism in music has
hit its peak this year. When was the
Iasi lime the music charts were so
inundated with remakes? Turn on
any top-40 radio station right now
and you’ll hear “Siltin’ on the Dock
of the Bay,” “All Right Now,” “I
Think We re Alone Now,” “Mony,
Mony’and others. And if you want to
hear the original versions, you can
tune into a multitude of oldies sta
tions. II you gel tired ol oldies, turn
on M IV to see “1980s” music, but
don’t be surprised it most of it sounds
like that 1970s gem, disco.
The early ’80s showed some
promise. Reagan was new in office,
and people had not gotten over what
they thought was a vacuum — the
’70s. Music was enjoying a surge of
creativity — new bands and new
styles ol sound were everywhere.
The consensus was that the ’70s
were boring, so everyone was ready
to experiment. People were con
vinced that the 80s would break new
ground, but I or some reason someone
decided the “’80s arc just like the
60s,’ and everything fell apart.
Perhaps retroactivity is only an
American problem. A recent issue of
Condc Mast’s Traveler magazine had
an essay about how* cutting-edge
Japan has become. The essay cited
Japan’s strong stock market, yen and
technology, the sudden importance
of Tokyo designers in the European
fashion market, avant-garde musi
cians and architecture. But Japanese
kids aren ’l wearing off-beat Japanese
fashions and listening to Japanese
music, the article said — they wear
poodle skirts, leather jackets, sport
D A. hairdos and dance to ’50s music
in Tokyo’s numerous ’50s America
clubs.
The reason? The author wrote that
American ’50s nostalgia is appealing
to the Japanese because it typifies an
innocence they never had after losing'
World War II.
Could it be that Americans are
obsessed with ’60s nostalgia because
it typifies a quest for progress that
eludes us?
New blood and energy will always
be bubbling in the underground,
waiting to surprise the public with
something original. But the notion of
“new” has almost become taboo
these days, and people cringe at
something that hasn't been done
before. It’s far too late in the decade
for the public to accept a new trend.
The last half of a decade always
shapes that decade’s identity — it
lakes years for anything to work its
way into the mainstream. Hippies
w ere around as early as the late '50s.
some of them tucked under the
“beatnik” label, but they didn’t
completely craw l out of obscurity
until the mid-’60s.
The "New Age” movement — the
spiritual htxlgcpodgc of meditation,
crystals and metaphysics that fxo
yuppies going wild — may cvcntu
ally become culturally significant,
hut not in the next few years. Perhaps
by 1992 or 1993, but not in the end of
the ’80s because the “New Age’
needs time if it expects to grow and
gain acccp»ancc.
If anything, the ’80s display a
blatant lack of sensibility. Without
sensibility, we become zombies,
devoid of thought, intellect or under
standing.
And that’s what these next two
years arc destined for, an age of cul
tural zombies. So we may as wcl
start burying what’s already dead and
prepare for the afterlife in another
generation and lime, the ’90s.
Hurrah ts a senior n* rs-rditoriaJ antf
Knglish major.
I If • • «
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