Editorial
[ Nebraskan
Editorial Board
University of Nebraska Lincoln
KSC deserves vote
Presidential search needs KSC input
In less than a year, Kearney State College will be part Of the
University of Nebraska system. In less than that time, NU
also should have a new president
It would seem logical that KSC, as the newest member of 1
NU, deserves a say in woo will preside over the system. But
the NU Board of Regents denied KSC that right at its June
meeting by failing to pass a proposal to give KSC a voting
member on die NU presidential search committee.
Regent Rosemary Skrupa of Omaha blamed poor timing for
her vote against the proposal and said she intends to rectify that
vote by introducing a similar proposal at tfte next meeting.
Skrupa said a letter from state Sen, Doug Kristensen of Mindcn
helped change her mind.
In Kristensen’s letter, addressed to regent chairman Don
Blank of McCook, he wrote, “It appears to me that Kearney
Stale has been given the role of ‘paying its dues’ before it
becomes part of the system. The University of Nebraska
j system is not a fraternity, and a period of plcdgcship for a new
campus is distasteful.”
Knstensen is ngm. It s time the regents put personal feelings
aside on the KSC merger and vote to support Skrapa’s pro
posal.
Regent Robert Allen of Hastings, who voted against the
original proposal, said-even though KSC has no official vote,
the search committee will be careful to look out for its interests
and will make sure the campus is treated fairly.
’Their (KSC’s) vote is not needed,’’ he said.
Allen’s attitude is exactly why KSC needs an official vote.
Without that power, KSC’s interests arc only as important as
the rest of the committee mctnbeis want them to be.
There have been arguments both for and against adding KSC
to tile NU system, as there have been arguments both for and
against eliminating NU’s central administration. But those
fights are in the past.
No sound arguments can be raised against allowing KSC a
voting member on the presidential search* committee. It’s time
to give the luturc Kearney campus of the NU system the
recognition it deserves.
*• Jana Pedersen
for che Daily Nebraskan
1
Special plates violate rights
The Iowa Legislature has approved
a new law designed specifically to
publicly humiliate you, should you
break the law.
... The new law requires drunken
drivers who are labeled “repeat of
fenders” to turn in the license plates
of their cars and replace them with
special plates that signify their crime.
The law allows authorities to stop
and interrogate the drives or cars with
the special plates for doing nothing
but going out for a drive.
While we believe drunken driving
is as deplorable as any violent crime.
a means to solve the problem is not by
branding the perpetrator with a “scarlet
letter.”
Forcing the offenders to be labeled
with the special plates is comparable
to locking them into a stockade of a
town square for public ridicule.
. . . The labeling violates basic
civil rights. It is cruel and unusual to
subject the offenders and their fami
lies to the humiliation of being la
beled a “drunk.” It also is not lair to
empower the police to stop them at
their convenience.
~ The Iowa Stale Daily
r m'AM THIS PfrmoM IS. ^ stop j~
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JU,NU* i
Situation prompts racism talk
Restaurant is setting for late-night debate between strangers
Imel Dennis (The Menace) Ar
nold Somethingorolhcr at an
Omaha Perkins restaurant at 5
a.m. last Saturday. D.A., as I came to
call him, is a 6-foot black man origi
nally from Milwaukee who had worked
all week for either a local packing
house or the FBI. When he sat down
next to me in my booth he was spill
ing Canadian Mist from a 7-Elevcn
cup onto my lap and saying, “There
goes my iced tea, Tom.”
The comic strip analogy was his,
not mine, but it was clear that the
restaurant employees favored it.
Whenever a waiter walked by, D.A.
shouted, “Hey, busboy, I need my
keys and my check. They ’re on a little
Florida key chain. ’ He did the same
for waitresses, substituting “lollipop”
for “busboy.” We smoked cigarettes
and babbled nothingness at each other
for nearly two hours, and whenever
D.A. felt the ashtray was loo full for
his liking, he dumped it over turning
our table into a: lag heap of menthol
ashes and Camel bulls. The woman
sitting at the end of the table, the third
stranger in our group of six, pretended
--1 think in the name of racial charity
— to be interested in what D.A. was
saying, but each time he look a drag
she interrupted him to request that he
not ash in her tea, something I’m sure
he would never do.
This woman was named after those
gray things on the moon made of
volcanic dust, and She was feminist
enough to get a scornful fire in her
eyes each time D.A. said “lollipop,”
but not enough to risk offending him
with a rebuttal, even though nothing
could possibly have offended him.
It was sort of a strange situation. A
couple of my friends had earlier sat
down with Moon Woman and one of
her friends, and had become embroiled
in a discussion of racism with a young,
sobcrblack man who occupied D.A.’s
scat before D.A. arrived. The discus
sion lured me away from some other
friends and to the table, and my two
friends and I sat quietly observing as
the two white women and the black
man went at it.
Moon Woman and her friend had
reacted to the man’s abusive treat
ment of the white waitress, and he
was defending it on the grounds that
he had suffered a lifetime of oppres
sion He had some impressive ex
amples to offer, and I tended to side
with him, especially since foul lan
guage could hardly have been any
surprise to a night waitress at Perkins.
Brandon
Loomis
Moon Woman said everyone, while
or black, should ireal each person as
an individual. The man said lhal cer
tainly sounded fair, bul was neither
possible nor desirable fora black man
who could rarely expect such respect
to be turned back on him.
Moon Woman said mutual respect
was the only way for inter-racial
progress, and asked us to recollect
what Martin Luther King had “got
ten.” Both her adversary and my until
then silent self could not resist the set
up, and simultaneously said that he
had gotten killed. Our tone indicated
that we both revered King and his
methods, bul felt that somehow the
world still was not perfect, and lhal
you can’t, very well expect people to
like everyone they meet, hoping that
one or two of them just might like
them back. It sounds nice, but it’s not
all that human.
Eventually, the young man got up
and went home, and D.A. immedi
ately took his seal. I had a truly great
and carefree time rubbing shoulders
with him, but the two women were
visually affected by their debate, and
they struggled not to evoke anything
foolish from D.A.’s mouth. This, of
course, was futile, but they seemed to
think that laughing at a drunk black
man would somehow be seen as ra
cism.
D.A., on the other hand, felt it was
his job to make people laugh at him.
He did a good job, and he was happy
when those of us who could laughed.
mc may nave caueu waiters nus
boys, and waitresses lollipops, and he
may have told one waiter in particular
that he looked exactly like Bart
Simpson, but D. A. was kind to every -
one. He used those derogatory terms
with an endearing playfulness that
most recognized and accepted. Moon
Woman and her friend did not, and
I’m sure if D A. had been a bit more
sober, they would have launched into
him. They constantly apologized to
an unaffected Bart Simpson for D.A. ’s
childish behavior.
D.A. had been lonely. I had been
bored. We both were a bit drunk. We
both were laughable. We both laughed
at and with each other. Moon Woman
and her friend were idealistic -- maybe
so much so that they shunned their
own ideals. Some of us had a good
time, others wanted to. Some of us at
least walked away thinking we made
some proverbial progress in a sort of
twisted Martin Luther King-like
manner.
Ivoomts is a senior news-editorial major
and the Summer Daily Nebraskan editorial
columnist.