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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (June 21, 1990)
Editorial (Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board University ot Nebraska-Lincoln " - " L ' .' • Jana Pedersen, Editor, 472 1766 Matt Herek, NewsEditor Brandon Loomis, Columnist John Payne, Entertainment Editor Darran Fowler, Sports Editor Brian Shcllito, Art Director Michelle Paulman, Photo Chief ... 1 .- .. Divestment works roundation should listen to Mandela elson Mandela arrived in New York yesterday on the first stop of his 12-day tour of the United States. Among other items on his agenda, Mandela is scheduled to meet with President Bush and New York business leaders, and will address a joint session of Congress. It is anticipated that Mandela will use these meetings to call for continued economic sanctions against South Africa. Strangely enough, a University of Nebraska-related institution | is one of the many South African investors that doesn’t seem to be getting Mandela’s message. The NU Foundation, a private fund I raising organization, invests in companies that do business in South Africa. Terry Fairfield, president of the foundation, maintains that the foundation’s South African investments arc “very minor” and that the foundation “focuses on investments as investments without consideration of social policies/ ' * j*, , In other words, it’s okay to do business with blatant racists, as long as you make money doing it. The Daily Nebraskan received a press release last week from the South African Consulate-General. H said the African Naisonal Congress, of which Mandela is deputy president, should not call for economic sanctions against South Africa, because * ‘sanctions arc harming the economic prospects of all South Africans." ^ The release went on to pat the South African government on the back for “looking at aspects of security legislation,” estab lishing “communication lines between the South African Police and ANC leaders” and acting “in terms of its policy to remove discrimination." Regardless of what South African government leaders are “looking at” doing, they have yet to follow through with any | solid steps toward a non-discrimmatory system of government. i Ami until the South African government goes beyond just talk, economic sanctions are the best way outside interests, such as U S. companies, the U.S. government and ihe NU Foundation, can have some influence inside South Africa’s borders. It’s obvious B that divestment works, or the South African Consulate-General wouldn ’t be sending out prcss releases to discourage it. i As representatives of this university, if ir. name only, the NU * Foundation must do its pan to convey die interests of the univer sity That means withdrawing investments from companies that do business in South Africa, at least until the South African govern ment puts jls words into action. - Jana Pedersen for the Daily Nebraskan Coordinator clarifies comments I would like to clarify my com ments from Mark Gcorgeff’s article of entitled “Study reveals discrimi nation” (DN, June 14). My comments to Mark discussed the fact that there is a brilliant and diverse pool of potential female can didates that could be recruited to UNL. I indicated that I felt there were some barriers preventing women and people of color form coming to UNL and that was evidenced by the commission’s finding that we arc not retaining many of the qualified women we attract to this university. These comments in no way indicate that I feel the women and people of color at UNL arc not qualified On the contrary, I find that the few women and people of color we have in the faculty and staff pool are extremely qualified and talented. I hope that we can remove some of the barriers and continue to attract such outstanding people to UNL. Another comment I made concerned the institutional responsibility to equal education for ail. I commented that it was the university’s responsibility to recruit a diverse pool of faculty and staff to provide a rich and diverse educational experience for all stu dents and to provide a quality educa tional experience for our increasingly diverse student population. I hope that the UNL administra tion will pay attention to this impor tant report and not only actively re cruit women and people of color, but do the follow-up work to remove the barriers that exist. Gina Malkin coordinator Women’s Resource Center -sf TODAV ON AMERICA^ SPORTSMAN . yjt'RE "TRACKING TWE Ft AG BURNER. A CRAFTV , VET DANGEROUS COUSIN TO THE SNIPE ... Tlhey say language is what sets us apart from the animals. We can talk to each other. We can write to each other. But all those animals can do is thump their feet or prick up their ears when it looks like trouble. We speak, and we can process ab stract ideas; therefore, we arc civi lized. But sometimes our language gets us in trouble. Some people use lan guage in order to be more like the animals. Some people in our country have the gall to speak languages we aren’t familiar with, and such people are therefore animals. Some people misuse language. When this happens, as it did in Wic hita this week, it becomes clear that we are all animals. Elephant seals. r\ coupic oi wccks ago, me Wic hita city council approved a new anti nude dancing law. It was intended to outlaw all nude dancing, but a miss ing comma in the statute set the town abuzz. The law was supposed to ban any form of nude dancing in a “drinking establishment, hotel,” but, stripped of its comma, the clause read, * ‘drink ing establishment hotel.” Because of that error, drinking establishments which were not hotels were fair game. Wichitans demanded and publicans supplied. Then the city announced that the law would be reworded correctly this week, and there was a record stam pede to the strip joints lor one last llmg. The way I ligurc it, human cities arc just like elephant seal colonics. Elephant seals live lor food, sex and reproduction.Humans live for family and intellectual achievement: family because we like the idea of nurturing children and shaping them in our own image, and intellectual achievement because it’s a good way to get what the elephant seals have. The human manager of one Wic hita bar, which had never before had Language can cause trouble Wichita anti-nude dancing law reminds us of animal instincts any type of dancers, said she was shipping in male strippers from Den ver for the occasion. She said it was only fair that women get to see a little something, too. I agree, but offer this as proof that men arc not the only animals in this species. Brandon Loomis The euphoria in Wichita was such that a local disc jockey was following the trend and preparing to do his late shi ft in the n udc. This proves a couple of things. First, our brains, while somewhat advanced above those in the ugly animals we evolved from, arc far from refined or even civili/cd when you compare them to that ugly E.T. thing. Second, it is clear that humans, or disc jockeys, are nothing more than primates sitting behind and operating expensive technical devices built by corporations backed by thou sands of apparently civilized stock holders. But the stockholders in Wichita, like hyenas or, say. Saint Bernards, flock to the dance shows. One Wichita bar owner said he might keep offering a nude show' to patrons and challenge the city law in court under the First Amendment. From this, I infer that the only real difference between humans and ani mals is that where animals either kill othcranmialsorlctthemdothe things that turn them on, humans lake their disputes to court and rely on 200 year-old documents to preserve their right to be turned on. But w hat of the people w ho pass the civil laws which make us civi lized7 Are city council members the only humans who arc not animals? Do they, in their benevolence, make it their lifelong goal to get the rest of us out of the Cro-Magnon stage7 No, cily council members arc the bull elephant seals of our colony. Bull elephant seals just don’t like to share. When they see another, infe rior bull approaching a cow that they have designs on, they charge, and the two males begin ramming theirchesis into each other and producing intimi dating snorts by echoing their trum peting trunks in their wide open mouths. In the end, the inferior or younger bull submits and flops off with his trunk between his flippers. In rare cases, the winner’s success in combat doesn't spill over into the next attempted conquest. Even so, the bull has made sure that if he can’t have it, no one will. Many animals perionn mis ruuai. Bighorn sheep do it. Baboons do it. Even humans do it, though with a bit less gusto now that we have handgun laws. City council members, if they value their jobs, will not be seen watching the male strippers from Denver. If they can’t do it, they sure won’t want anyone else to. Hence, civilization. Last week, while sitting in the break room of the blue-collar busi ness which pays me subsistence wages, I overheard a man asking a colleague for a cigarette. “I’ll bend over and kiss your ass I ’lil you bark like a registered fox- I hound if you’llgivcmeoncoflhcm,’ | he said. 1 Smoking is a physical urge. While ■ other animals don’t smoke cigarettes, we generally consider physical urges to he representatives of the animal in us. So, what separates us from the animals? It’srcally pretty simple. We use devices like comic wit, or at least perversity, to satisfy our animal in stincts in a round-about way. And I would have been only slightly surprised had the man actually barked like a registered foxhound. Loomis is a senior news editorial major and the Summer Daily Nebraskan editorial 1 columnist. d
