CORRECTION: In Diana Johnson's column (DN April 10), the city of Lincoln
was mistakenly said to have purchased a new landfill site
WEATHER: INDEX
Tuesday, high 50-55, NW winds 15 30 mph
Tuesday night, fair and cooler with lows in 30s
Wednesday, sunny with highs in mid to upper r ?ws ?
50s Thursday through Saturday, cooler with e
chance of rain or snow Thursday, a dry and Enterta.nment 5
slowly warming trend Friday and Saturday Classifieds 7
April 11, 1989 University of Nebraska-Lincoln Vol. 88 No. 135
UNL student alcohol consumption drops
1985( ..8.5% 1 r^f —
1986 !
1987|
..... mm iw.ti hum twwyfwywj^wwwYwwwwwwf^rww^ ...
1983. 17.9% I 1 I 1
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1986 ';! * 29.8% §|;|“4
1Q87 ~.* " ‘ 4^4%^-Mill
iQBfj ' 22.5%1 i | j
Source Student Health Survey.
John Bruce/Daily Nebraskan
By Ryan Sleeves
Staff Reporter
According lo a University of
Ncbraska-Lincoln official,
UNL students arc following a
national trend by consuming less
alcohol.
Greg Barth, information systems
manager for the University Health
Center, said statistics from the annual
Student Health Survey show that
fewer students are drinking. The sur
vey also showed that students who do
drink arc drinking less, he said.
But at least one UNL professor
contends that it is hard to tell whether
students actually are consuming less.
Wayne Osgood, assistant profes
sor of sociology at UNL, said statis
tics from the survey arc “pretty hard
to read.”
According to the survey, written
by the University Health Center and
distributed by the sociology depart
ment, 25 percent of UNL students
said they drank live or more drinks at
least one day a week in 1985. In 1986,
the figure rose to 29.8 percent. In
1987, it rose to 40.4 percent, and in
1988 it dropped to 22.5 percent.
In 1985,8 percent of students said
they went out drinking at least three
days a week. That number rose in
1986 to 11.3 percent, rose again in
1987 to 14.5 percent, and dropped in
1988 to 7.9 percent.
Osgood said the .1-percent drop
from 1985 to 1988 in the number of
students drinking at least three days a
week is not significant.
Considering the small number of
students surveyed, Osgood said, the
2.5-pcrcent drop from 1985 to 1988
in the number of students drinking
five drinks at least one night a week
also is not significant. About 300
students arc surveyed every year, he
said.
Drops from year to year usually
can’t be used to measure trends,
Osgood said. Analyzing longer peri
ods of time is necessary to determine
if there is a trend, he said.
Barth said, however, the statistics
show that students arc drinking less.
He said he doesn’t know any reasons
for the decline.
If there is a decline at UNL, it
would coincide with a national trend.
Between 1980-1987, Americans’
See ALCOHOL on 3
Admissions director Beacon named to financial aid post
By Lee Rood
Senior Hdilor
John Beacon is iwo-timing
University of Nebraska-Lin
coln students.
Beacon, originally hired as UNL
director of admis
sions in February
1987, has offi
cially combined
that job with one
he has been doing
unofficially since
last June - direct
ing the Office of
Scholarships and_
Financial Aid. Beacon
The NU Board of Regents voted in
March to allow Beacon to be director
of both offices, a challenge Beacon
said he readily accepts and plans to
live up to.
Beacon said he won’t short
change UNL students with his dual
responsibility because both offices
have “extremely good staffs” and
share similar policy-understanding
responsibility.
Having knowledge of admissions
and financial aid policies helps him
do both jobs, he said.
To stay close to the two jobs and
utilize staff in both areas, Beacon
combined the offices’ space in the
basement of the Administration
Building and linked the areas by a
mutual waiting room.
Beacon said the new look, en
hanced reception area and more in
viting new glass doors says to stu
dents “come on in, we want to help
you.”
All the work moving offices,
computers and personnel was done
during spring break, he said. The
office continued to operate through
that lime.
A new face is just one of many
changes Beacon has initiated since
taking over as OSFA interim director
in June 1988.
Beacon took on tlv second office,
which at the time was plagued with
problems, promising Vice Chancel
lor for Student Affairs James Griesen
that he would spend 95 percent of his
time bringing OFSA together and 5
percent of his time managing the
admissions office.
Since that time, Beacon has:
• made major changes in the
OSFA staff, making it one that is
“focused on providing service to
students and extremely capable.”
• made deferments available to
students whose aid already was late
when he inherited the office.
• established a Financial Aid
Advisory Board with representatives
from eight university population seg
ments to address grievances and initi
ate changes.
• sent the OFSA staff to the Ne
braska Union in January to help stu
dents with their financial aid applica
tions and answer questions.
• moved the office around inter
nally to make necessary information
more accessible to staff.
Two other recent improvements
Beacon said he initiated are changing
UNL’s financial aid processor from
the College Scholarship Service to
the American College Testing Pro
gram and getting student award no
tices out earlier than past years.
ACT will become UNL’s “pre
ferred processor” during the 1990-91
school year, he said. Changing proc
essors will make the process of veri
fying students’ financial aid forms
more efficient than CSS, he said.
It also will be cheaper for the of
fice and students, he said. CSS costs
$8.25 per “code” while ACT costs
S7 per code. A code represents each
school a student is considering and
needs financial aid consideration for.
“ACT is at the cutting edge of
technology,” Beacon said.
“Also,” he said, “Nebraska is the
last Big Eight university to still use
CSS - that’s not a reason (for
change), but that probably says some
thing.”
Preliminary award letters detail
ing what financial-aid students most
likely will receive will be out this
week, Beacon said. Official award
notices are expected to be out the
beginning of May — about two
months earlier than last year.
The changes Beacon has imple
mented in the OFSA have not come
without sacrifice, he said. He has
worked nearly every Saturday since
becoming interim director and his
See BEACON on 3
Dissertation options considered
By Eric Pfanner
Staff Reporter
nraduatc Studies officials at the Univer
sity of Ncbraska-Lincoln said they
have received inquiries, but no specific
proposals, to allow alternatives to traditional
dissertations for students in doctoral programs.
But Merlin Lawson, acting dean and assis
tant vice chancellor for Graduate Studies, said
he “anticipates changes arc in order.”
Lawson said that at UNL, students in sci
ence and engineering doctorate programs can
use articles from academic journals as appen
dices to their dissertations, but not as replace
ments for the dissertations.
Roger Bruning, acting associate dean of
Graduate Studies, said the traditional disserta
tion consists of an introduction, a literature
review, a results section and a discussion of
results. Dissertations in the sciences may also
include a methods section, he said.
Bruning said UNL officials need to be open
to looking at dissertation alternatives such as
“It is a matter we would be willing to
study,” he said.
The faculty values traditional dissertations,
he said, because they allow students to express
themselves fully.
Typical journal articles, he said, are “tele
graphic - not expansive,” and therefore, more
abbreviated than the traditional dissertation.
But as more and more students in the basic
sciences are involved in joint research and
writing for publication, he said, alternatives
may be considered.
In the social sciences and humanities,
“single scholars arc more the norm,” Bruning
said.
Lawson said graduate committees for indi
vidual departments put forth the requirements
for dissertations. Any proposed alternatives
would go through the graduate committees
first, and then to the UNL Graduate Council.
Russell Hamilton, Vanderbilt University’s
graduate school dean, said several universities
already allow alternatives to the traditional
See DOCTORATE on 3
Test not required for MIP cases
By Larry Peirce
Senior Reporter
Susan Tast, an AS UN Student Legal
Services attorney, wants students to
know they can “just say no” to police
officers who ask them to take breathalyzer
tests, as long as the students aren’t driving.
“Any minor that is not driving has no duty
to submit” to breath tests to determine blood
alcohol content, Tast said.
Student Legal Services Director Shelley
Stall said one student, arrested for minor in
possession of alcohol, contacted her to ask
whether he would have had to take a breath test
after police requested one.
The student said he asked the police officer
whether he had to take the test and the officer
answered, “1 want you to,” Stall said.
But, because the officer failed to answer the
student directly, Tast said she thought the offi
cer misled the student.
Stall and Tast said they are ‘ ‘concerned that
police are coercing people to take a test” they
don’t have to take.
“Sometimes you don’t have to obey a po
liceman when he has no authority to ask,” Tast
said.
Students may feel coerced to take breath
tests, Tast said, because they arc taught to obey
police.
“We should respect police,” she said.
‘ ‘ Maybe police should respect us when we ask
a question.”
Tast said breathalyzer tests aren’t necessary
in an MIP case because they don’t prove pos
See MIP on 3
I_II
David Frana/Daily Nebraskan
Husker handoff
Nebraska quarterback Gerry Gdowski hands off to fullback Sam Schmidt
during Nebraska’s practice Monday afternoon.
