Neliraiskan
Wednesday, May 2,1990
Daily
Nebraskan
Editorial Board
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Amy I'J wards. Editor, 472-1766
Bob Nelson, Editorial Page Editor
Ryan Steeves, Managing Editor
I:ric Pfanner, Associate News Editor
Lisa Donovan, Associate News Editor
Brandon Loomis, Wire Editor
Jana Pedersen, Night News Editor
I What Others Think
Improved drug testing still is intrusive
At least two Florida companies are taking the matter of
drug testing straight to the top - of your head.
Barnett Banks Inc. and Blockbuster Entertainment
Corp. will test potential employees for drugs by snipping
off about 50 1-inch samples of their hair, liquefying them
and testing the liquid for drugs the same way they would
urine.
The process involves analyzing the core of a hair strand
where traces of a drug may be embedded. Experts like this
test better than urine tests because they say it is less
intrusive and provides a longer drug history, often reveal
ing drugs taken several years before.
The tests, new and improved or not, are still intrusive
and violate privacy. It is no one’s business if a worker
chooses to take drugs, just so long as that use does not
interfere with job performance. If drug use interferes with
job performance, then fire the employee based on job
performance, not on drug usage.
We aren’t talking about jobs that people trust their lives
to, such as pilots. We are talking about the guy you rent
your video from or the woman who cashes your check.
Doing drugs on the job is one thing. A boss has every
right and responsibility to ensure productivity and fire
those emplyees who are not producing because they are
impaired. But prohibiting people from employment
i because they took dnigs months before is ridiculous.
- Alligator
University of Florida
Editors ignore Rally for Life
The Daily Nebraskan is again
showing their blatant pro-abortion bias
and continuing to bow to the media
giants when given ample opportunity
on their own to speak the truth.
1 am referring to the lack of at least
a small story on the national Rally for
Life held in Washington D.C. on
Saturday, April 28. Even if one were
to go by the UP1 estimate of the crowd
(which was somewhat deflated),
569,000 people attended the rally.
Event organizers put the actual total
as somewhere nearer to 700,0(X). Either
way, the event was the largest politi
cal demonstration in the more than
200+ year history of the city, and one
of the largest in the 200+ year history
of our nation.
But what do my eyes see in the
Monday, April 30, issue of the DN? A
Page 2 reactionist abortion poll, bor
rowed from the Omaha World-Her
ald, that shows 53 percent of Nebras
kans think that a woman should be
allowed an abortion if she chooses to
have one. Hmmmm ... it's interest
ing that so many Nebraskans changed
their minds so fast, when at the end of
January (after the Nebraska Walk for
Life) the Journal-Star ran a poll say
ing that 48 percent of Nebraskans
considered themselves “pro-life” and
46 percent themselves “pro-choice. ’ ’
Granted, there has been a lot of pol iti
cal hype lately because of the upcom
ing primary elections, but 1 doubt that
in the space of three months, 7 per
cent (which is how many thousands?)
of Nebraskans have changed their
minds on such an important issue.
The fact remains that the editors of
Daily Nebraskan surely saw the wire
story on the Rally for Life yet chose
to ignore it and print another article in
its place which supports their view.
My already low estimation of the DN
editors in dealing with this issue has
ceased to become a low estimation —
it is outright contempt. One of the
mam reasons many Nebraskans are
supposedly “pro-choice” (but really
4 4pro-abortion”) is because that’s the
view they see in the media most of the
lime.
One final note: If the majority of
Americans arc “pro-choice,” then
why is it that the pro-choice camp
couldn’t get nearly as many people
committed enough their cause (300,000
or so) to come to their rally in Wash
ington D.C. on Nov. 12, 1989, as the
pro-life camp could get to come to
theirs? Think about that before you
enter the polls on May 15.
Ben Lass
UNL employee
Division of Continuing Studies
Igilgjfancn
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editorial^
Editorials do not necessarily re
flect the views of the university, its
employees, the students or the NU
Board of Regents.
Editorial columns represent the
opinion of the author.
The Daily Nebraskan’s publishers
arc the regents, who established the
UNL Publications Board to supervise
the daily production of the paper.
According to policy set by the re
gents, responsibility for the editorial
content of the newspaper lies solely in
the hands of its student editors.
... VJON'T GET ¥
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| SNE START TO SEE |
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Swan song haunted by regret
Dreams of rock ‘n roll stardom destroyed by pragmatism
My supcr-cool rock ‘n’ roll band.
The Lemmings, broke up a few weeks
ago. We had some creative differ
ences, mainly that we could no longer
create because we had forgotten how
to play our instruments.
I contributed very few songs to
The Lemmings repertoire. “The Bam’s
Too Big To Sleep In But It Ain’t Big
Enough To Make Love In” was proba
bly my masterpiece, followed closely
in genius by my only other songs,
“Diamond Studded Woman,”
“Choke It Down” and “Black Lung
Cake.”
I go more for quality than quantity
in my song-writing. The other band
members wanted hits, and they wanted
them fast. The pressure became too
much, and I decided that I needed a
new direction. 1 recently joined the
spccd-mctal band, Prunic Units, and
the acoustic folk duet, Two Big Lips.
Both projects arc progressing nicely,
but 1 have a feeling that neither band
will make it big. I have to leave Lin
coln soon, far too soon to mold a
professional act.
1 think college ruined my career in
rock ‘n’ roll. I spent too much time
going to class and working at the DN.
I should have been on the road. Now
I have to go be a journalist. It’s a
regret that will haunt me far past my
first Pulitzer.
When 1 was a freshman, I was in a
band called Forgetful Jones. We were
serious, and we were the worst band
in Lincoln. My voice sucked, our
P.A. sucked, I was scared of audi
ences, audiences thought we sucked
and all through this, I was convinced
vve were going to be ‘ ‘The band of the
90s.” In the one-year life of Forgetful
Jones, we had one original song — a
flaccid little jinglc-janglcr called
“Dream and Dream Alike.”
Last week, I found a 1986 record
ing of Forgetful Jones playing in the
Nebraska Union ballroom. I had for
gotten the lyrics to ‘ ‘Dream and Dream
Alike.” Some of them areas follows:
Dream and dream alike
If darkness comes I’ll know
That everything’s alright.
Lie down, you may never gel up,
No, not from dying,
But something that kills the same.
... And soon. Besides the teenage
drama, it was kind of a neat little
thing about growing older and dying
inside. It was about safety and ruts
and forgetting. The last lines of the
lyrics were:
Dream and dream alike
If marked (myself) I’d recall
That nothing was alright....
The “mark,” if I remember cor
rectly, was an attempt to make this
song a sort of string around my finger
Bob
Nelson
to remind me “That nothing was al
right” — a check on dead life and at
the same time a sort of optimistic
nihilism.
We botched the ending and about
three people clapped.
And here I am on the edge of the
real world -- without a serious band --
writing a swan-song column about
being lectured by lyrics I wrote as a
17-year-old freshman in college. I
haven’t written a serious song lyric in
four years. Looking back, this is proha
bly for the best; except that dreams
can’t be tainted with judgments on
talent. Wc all know that.
I’ve seen college graduates. They
talk in correct and en oty sentences
and cook their food in ovens. Some
times they have Tidy-Bowl to make
their toilet-water blue like the sky.
1 believe now that the trick of
college is to build yourself a bright
future out of an equally bright pres
ent: Seize The Day, but not so hard
that seizing the day tomorrow is
impossible. This sort of pragmatism
is judgment on dreams - an illness in
Forgetful Jones’ only song.
Wc named the band Forgetf ul Jones
after a rarely-seen cowboy puppet on
Sesame Street and also because of the
connotations of the name in relation
to the battle-cry of materialism and
conformity, “Keeping up with the
Joneses.”
I dreamed about discussing our
band’s name with a writer for Rolling
Stone magazine. I figured that people
would be dazzled by the playful bril
liance of our name. At the same lime,
my band was plagiarizing trendy
college songs like “What I Like About
You” and “Louie Louie.”
Emerson said, “there is a time in
every man’s education when he ar
rives at the conviction that envy is
ignorance; that imitation is suicide;
that he must take himself for better,
for worse, as his portion; that... no
kernel of nourishing com can come to
him but through his toil bestowed on
that plotof ground which is given him
to till.”
It seems that there is a continuum
in all this. At one end is the dream and
at the other, the dream realized. Be
tween those two points are a million
decisions between present fulfillment
and present work for future fulfill
ment. Do you study or do you party?
If you study, you get your chosen
occupation. If you party, you will live
each moment to the fullest.
If you study, you waste the pres
ent. If you party, you jeopardize the
future. And all this time, you’ve got
to avoid the malaise in which there
are no more decisions being made.
So do I rock or do I write? That
I ’ rrt o f(*n ■ ii/ac m 'iHo If IflU
ago. I dreamed and didn’t act on music.
But I think everyone dreams about
being a rock star. I think those dreams
fuel the adulation that musicians re
ccive. That same adulation makes
people dream about being musicians.
It’s a weird and vicious circle that
makes you play air guitar in your
room when you should be studying.
But I’ll be out of this university
with a decent GPA, a decent job and
a pile of decent memories of playing
music simply to be stupid. My col
lege days could have been a whole lot
worse. Forgetful Jones could have
continued living in its crypt of imila
lion and envy.
So that’s what I know about col
lege in a swan and a bad song. Be
sides that. I’m scared of Tidy-Bowl,
I’m scared of the Jones and most ol
all. I’m scared my college marks will
wear off.
Is there liie after college? Ted
Nugent still locks like he’s having
fun. I suppose it’s all a state of mind
Nelson is a senior news-editorial major and
the Daily Nebraskan editorial page editor
and a columnist.