I Correction: In the Oct .26 Daily Nebraskan, Iowa State quarterback Chris Pedersenwas [
referred to as Carl Straw, who is a quarterback for Kansas State. The Daily Nebraskan I
rearets this error. I
WEATHER
Today, sunny and warm, south wind 10-15 miles
per hour, high 70-75. Tonight, mostly clear, low
40^45 Tuesday, mostly sunny with a high near
70.
INDEX
News Digest.2
Editorial.4
Sports.9
Arts & Entertainment.12
Classifieds.15
October 29, 1990 University of Nebraska-Lincoln Vol. 90 No. 44
NU may consider
total divestment
By Adeana Leftin
Staff Reporter
The University of Nebraska may
consider full divestment of
South Africa, an administrator
said.
“It’s under discussion right now
whether we (administrators) propose
to the Board of Regents whether we
go one, two or three steps forward,”
James Van Horn, NU associate vice
president for administration, said at
an apartheid awareness panel Friday.
Van Horn said he thought the uni
versity had watched its portfolio care
fully. But headmitted that the univer
sity still invested in companies that
might be considered questionable, such
as General Electric, Westinghouse Inc.,
and General Motors.
“Those slocks arc in our portfolio
because we have not had any policy
to have them removed,” Van Horn
said. “I guess I’ll just have to sit down
and review the list of names.
“We do try to make healthy deci
sions, but it’s not possible without
expertise which we’re building on,”
he said.
Robert Hitchcock, a visiting assis
tant professor of anthropology, said
the university has to use the informa
tion provided by companies, which
are not always truthful about their
investment practices.
“That’s not the fault of the univer
sity, that’s the fault of the system —
it’s the system that needs to be
changed,” Hitchcock said.
Hitchcock said many have argued
that the university system should not
divest of South Africa.
The biggest argument, he said, is
that South Africa is changing and NU
should be at the forefront of an anti
apartheid country.
But Hitchcock said he visited South
Africa last week and people still are
being arrested.
South African President F.W. de
Klerk revoked the separate amenities
act that restricted blacks from sharing
beaches and public restrooms, he said,
but more needs to be done.
“Doing away with legislation just
doesn’t hold water,” Hitchcock said.
“Things haven’t changed all that
much.”
Dane Kennedy, an associate pro
fessor of history at UNL, said divest
ment gets results.
“Any sort of criticism that comes
from the West has an undermining
force,” Kennedy said.
Criticism makes South Africans
doubt the legitimacy of the system
they’ve established, he said.
“The United States has been at the
forefront of this movement,” Ken
nedy said.
Steve Schueth, vice president of
socially responsible investing for the
Calvert Group, said a few years ago
Nebraska had taken a leading posi
tion on divestment.
Calvert invests in companies that
meet its financial, ethical and envi
ronmental criteria. The group avoids
any company with direct or indirect
ties to South Africa.
Nebraska may have fallen behind
on divestment, Schueth said.
“I sense . . . they became pretty
satisfied with that position and since
then things have overtaken them,’’ he
said.
I_
rr> t * * i j i KHey T>,mp«r1ey/DaHy Nebraskan
Take me out to the card show
Joe Girardi, catcher for the Chicago Cubs, signs baseball cards, copies and an original
watercolor picture of himself for Eron Keely on Sunday. Keely drew the artwork and also
had a display of other professional athletes he has drawn at the Sports Card Show IV,
which was this past weekend in the Centennial Ballroom at the Nebraska Union.
Spending lid opponents urge blue protest by fans
By Kelly Ann Kennedy
Staff Reporter
Students organizing opposition to the pro
posed 2 percent lid are hoping Nebras
kans won’t be seeing red at the Ncbraska
Colorado game Saturday.
The Students Against 2% organization is
planning “Wear Blue Against CU,” encourag
ing students and faculty members to wear blue,
instead of the Comhuskcrs’ traditional red, to
show their opposition to the lid.
The proposed amendment, which will go
before voters in the Nov. 6 election, would
limit state and local government spending in
creases to 2 percent a year. University officials
have said it would devastate UNL’s operation.
The Association of Students of the Univcr
sity of Nebraska passed a bill Wednesday
encouraging AS UN senators and others at the
university to wear blue to the football game.
A wave of blue instead of red might help
reach more people with the message to vole
against the lid, said Shawn Burnham, chair
woman of the Government Liaison Commit
tee.
“Because the game will be televised on
ESPN, it will be seen all over. It will be very
effective if students get involved,” she said.
The television coverage of students wearing
blue, Burnham said, will show Nebraskans the
true color of the 2 percent lid.
“It could make a huge impact and might
make people think twice about the 2 percent
lid,” she said.
Doug Oxley, an organizer of Students Against
2%, agreed.
“We arc looking to have students get their
opinions out so the state knows how students
feel about the 2 percent lid,” Oxlcv said.
Oxley doesn’t expect that wearing blue will
affect people who arc in favor of the 2 percent
lid, but “it could affect people who arc unde
cided on the issue.”
Burnham and Oxley stressed that the effort
is not meant to be unsupportivc of the football
team.
“We want to strongly emphasize that this is
an action to wear blue against Colorado and the
2 percent lid. We arc not at all trying to be
unloyal to Nebraska football by wearing blue,”
Oxley said.
Blue was chosen because il is a common
color and contrasts with red, Burnham said.
“Just to even have the student section look
blue and red would make this successful,”
Oxley said. “I think there is a lot of support on
campus and a lot of students and faculty who
will wear blue if they know about this.”
Such protests have taken place before at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. On Oct. 27,
1979, students wore blue to a home football
game to urge improved educational quality at
IJNL, Oxley said.
Students Against 2% is advertising the blue
campaign on campus by distributing fliers.
They also plan to run advertisements and make
announcements to fraternities and sororities,
Oxley said.
Speaker says
minorities need
economic clout
By Stacey McKenzie
Staff Reporter
It is time minorities
“grabbed the bull by the
economic horns,” said
Freeman Davis, director of the
Minority and Women’s Small
Business Assistance Center in
Lincoln.
Davis spoke Sunday on the
economic empowerment of
people of color at the Culture
Center.
It is umc that minorities started
helping themselves by invest
ing in their youth and not “cast
ing their older generation to the
wind,” he said.
See DAVIS on 6
MAMA's Magic Mailbox
Group to publish newsletter for servicemen
By James P. Webb
Staff Reporter
Cn association of like-minded
writers at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln is trying to
reach out to servicemen stationed in
the Middle East through down-to
earth Nebraska prose, the group’s
founder said.
David Hibler, an assistant profes
sor of English, said the Middle Ameri
can Manuscript Association plans
today to mail the first edition of its
12-page weekly newsletter, MAMA’s
Magic Mailbox.
Students with friends or relatives
in the Middle East can special-ad
dress a newsletter or send a handwrit
ten note from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today
at a booth in the Nebraska Union, he
said.
The first edition of the newsletter
contains a short poem, a brief de
scription of how the newsletter came
about and two essays. One portrays
the emotional pitfalls of a young
woman who compares real relation
ships with dreamlike ones and the
other gives a frightful account of a
young man’s firsthand experience with
snakes.
Hiblcr said that after he became
aware that troops were severed from
human support channels, it seemed a
practical solution for college students
to begin crcat ing a bond with service
men of the same age and culture.
The final product is a “cross be
tween a personal letter from home
and a real Nebraska experience.” And
unlike the outpouring of support let
ters nationwide, the newsletter is
perhaps the first national eff ort to link
college students and U.S. troops in
the Middle East, he said.
In doing so, Hiblcr said, the news
letter will entertain troops who arc
“bored out of their socks” and edu
cate writers at the same time.
“We’re trying to service the hu
man needs over there apart from the
political question,” Hiblcr said.
While the troops provide the
MAMA writers with a “known audi
ence,” Hiblcr said, the troops also can
write something and send it to Hiblcr
to be included in the newsletter.
In fact, he said, any IJNL student
can write for MAMA’s Magic Mail
box. The only guideline is that the
writing be non-political and upbeat in
nature, he said.
“We re more ol a loose-knit col
lection of people. More than anything
else, we just share our particular phi
losophy on composition,” Hiblcr said
Of MAMA.
Hiblcr, who composes the news
letter electronically, said the group is
attempting to cut the newsletter's
production cost so that as many troops
as possible can receive it.
Under the limited budget of his
department, 144 copies of each weekly
issue will be published, Hiblcr said.
But by the end of the year, he said, he
hopes to publish 12,(XX) copies and
eventually print 144,(XX) copies with
the help of corporate sponsorship.
For 15 years, MAMA has been
trying to muster a national following
of writers that share its philosophy,
and this project is probably the best
chance it will have of getting national
atienuon, Hiblcr said.
“We intended to make a differ
ence in the national art world,” Hiblcr
said. “We still do.”