Editorial
j Daily
(Nebraskan
■ Editorial Board
■ University of Nebraska-Lincoin
Eric Pfanner, Editor, 472-1766
Victoria Ayolte, Managing Editor
Darcie Wiegert, Associate News Editor
Diane Brayton, Associate News Editor
Jana Pedersen, Wire Editor
Emily Rosenbaum, Copy Desk Chief
Lisa Donovan, Editorial Page Editor
Good move, but...
Lack of knowledge cheats student body
One of the biggest themes of this year’s ASUN election
was that student leaders and their constituents needed to
open up the lines of communication to gain a better
understanding of student needs.
Wednesday night’s senate meeting was a fulfillment of that
campaign promise as the Association of Students of the Uni
l versity of Nebraska voted in a racial affairs committee and a
l gay/lesbian/bisexual committee.
Unfortunately, that campaign promise almost got lost this
i semester in legislative semantics and confusion. Senators
J waded through the ASUN constitution for almost three hours
v Wednesday night before the bylaw amendments were passed.
It was ridiculous. By the time ali was said and done, it was
j discovered that minority representation had been slowed this
semester by a lack of knowledge about ASUN’s structure.
When the senate voted down a racial minorities committee
back in October, senators proposed legislation to create advi
sory boards. But minorities rejected the advisory board idea
saying a non-voting standing committee would give them a
I stronger voice.
Unfortunately, neither side realized that the board and the
non-voting standing committee really carried the same weight:
both provide input and knowledge on issues that senators have
little knowledge of.
■ 50 a/ter much pain, sweat, agony and an attempt to com
I pletely restructure ASUN committees, we find out that it was a
| misunderstanding. ASUN and the minorities were playing on
! the same team.
i Speaker Andy Massey remarked that the senate was getting
bogged down with one issue and not addressing other equally
important campus problems.
He’s right. The entire student body has been cheated by its
student government because it didn’t understand what it was
i doing. As President Phil Gosch said, there was a lack of com
munication.
I “It shows how hard cross-cultural communication can be,”
he said.
But the senate’s mistakes went beyond cross-cultural com
munication. What we had here was a lack of understanding by
the government of how its structural parts work. It is difficult
for student government to even function, much less communi
cate, when it has no idea what it’s doing.
“I think a lot of people learned a lot of things. .. both about
government and themselves,’’ Gosch said.
In the process, the senate passed some of the most progres
sive legislation to hit ASUN in a long time. For the first time
in years, senators responded to student needs and lived up to
their campaign promises.
Unfortunately their lesson almost cost students and their
government an entire semester.
Now it’s on to other issues. ASUN better take the winter
break to go over its structure. That way the lines of communi
cation won’t get tangled in technicalities.
— Lisa Donovan
for ihe Daily Nebraskan
Make defense consistent
in animal rights argument
Fran Thompson, in wanting to help
you fulfill one of your life’s major
goals of the defense of animals and to
enable you to defend animals against
“the unnecessary pain humans put
them through all during their lives
and deaths,” 1 suggest a few addi
tional steps:
• Stop driving your car, because
no matter how carefully you drive
you will kill, injure, and maim hun
dreds of animals, insects, birds, ro
dents, etc. If you do not stop driving it
implies that you approve of such
wanton killing.
• Stop using all types of petro
leum products. By using them you are
directly supporting the petroleum in
dustry that is responsible for natural
atrocities as the Exxon Valdez disas
ter.
• Stop washing your skin and hair.
By continuing good personal hygiene
you are depriving animals such as
lice a naiutal place to live and arc
actually poisoning and killing and
otherwise causing grievous harm to
facial mites.
• Stop eating vegetables. In the
production of vegetables, countless
billions of animals: protozoans, in
sects, arachnids and others are poi
soned, crushed and otherwise receive
great bodily injury. If you eat any
fresh vegetables you are directly re
sponsible for causing animals to be
eaten alive and to suffocate and/or be
burned to death by your own gastric
secretions.
If you truly want to defend ani
mals, why not be consistent and de
fend them all instead of just ones that
are “convenient” to defend?
Dave Stage
freshman
law
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Execute the death penalty right
Capital punishment’s purpose is being hindered by loopholes
"Today is a good day to die."
— Kiefer Sutherland,
“Flail iners”
Tomorrow would have been...
In 1983,1 was a scared little
kid; a little kid wno feigned
bravery and bravado every time he
walked down the streets after dark, a
little kid who turned on all the lights
in the house and armed himself with
the biggest knife he could find when
ever he was home alone.
I was afraid because everything 1
had been taught about my hometown
had blown up in my face.
Bellevue was supposed to be the
perfect place to grow up, far from the
crime, drugs and violence of urban
America.
That was until someone snatched
13-year old Danny Joe Eberle as he
was delivering papers early one morn
ing and shattered Bellevue’s story
book image as the perfect suburban
homeland. And before the town could
recover from the shock and dispel the
rumors that accompanied the discov
ery of his dead and violated body,
another little boy was gone.
As I walked to school every morn
ing, I compared notes with my best
friend as to how we would protect
ourselves from the menace that was
killing little kids in our hometown.
We were afraid, but as seventh
graders, far too manly to admit it.
Months later, I could relax, com
forted by the knowledge that John J.
Joubert was in jail, had plead guilty to
the killings, and was on the short path
to hell to pay for what he had done to
two boys and the psyche of the city.
Today I am a taxpayer whose blood
boils every time I think of the fact that
Joubert has a roof over his head and is
eating three meals a day out my wal
let. I am irate because everything I
have been taught about truth, justice
and the American way is turning out
wrong.
As they are growing up, children
in this nation are spoon-fed a picture
of Uncle Sam sheltering them from
harm while the powers of evil receive
their well-deserved punishment. When
they are old enough to think for them
selves, they see that the old codger is
just picking their pockets as the scum
skips back into the alleys.
Joubcrt has been on death row
Chris
Hopfensperger
since 1984, when he was sentenced
for the killings of Eberle and Christo
pher Walden.
Since then, he has gotten fat, ap
pealed his case countless limes, been
denied just as often, and winged of f to
Maine for a little vacation from the
friendly conf ines of Nebraska’s death
row.
In the great Northeast, Joubcrt was
convicted of yet another child killing,
which he had committed conveniently
before the enlistment in the Air Force
that brought him to Bellevue.
Today, instead of being under
Nebraska’s thumb in the state peni
tentiary, Joubcrt is in a cushy Maine
prison, where he is buying himself
time chasing down legal loopholes
and technicalities to get out of his
death sentence.
Joubcrt would like nothing more
than to stay there forever. If he can
overturn the agreement between the
governors of the two states, he can
stay in Maine, and stay alive, because
the Lobster State has no death pen
alty. He should already be dead. Last
week, however, U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Harry Blackmun barred the
state from exterminating Joubert so
that the high court could stick its nose
into the mess.
The people with the gavels in their
hands, the judges who are supposed
to keep the streets safe for everyone,
obviously do not realize that the pur
pose of the death penalty is not re
form . It is not intended to teach people
the error of their ways. It is supposed
to kill people, those who don’t de
serve to live.
More and more, it seems that states
arc not willing to get rid of their trash.
There is nothing intimidating about
screaming “An eye for an eye,” while
practicing “A free ride for an eye.”
Today Nebraska has 12 men on
death row, but the state’s electric
chair has been gathering dust since
the 1959 electrocution of Charles
Starkweather. John Rust has been gath
ering dust on death row since 1975.
Convicted murderer Harold Lamont
“Walkin’ Willie” Otey, who was to
die at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, was granted
a stay of execution in November by
the Nebraska Supreme Court.
A new execution date could be set
if Oley’s appeal for post-conviction
relief in the state’s high court is re
jected after the upcoming six to eight
weeks of deliberations.
What makes even less sense are
the state’s priorities. Thenextsched
uled deaths in the state’s electric chair,
in February, are for Michael Ryan
and Clarence Victor—the death row
rookies. Ryan was sentenced in 1986,
and Victor in 1988.
Maybe they figure that Ryan and
Victor will be easy to nail because
they haven’t been on death row long
enough to figure out all the ways to
get out of dying.
Hopfensperger is a sophomore news-edi
torial major and a Daily Nebraskan senior
sports reporter.
Editorial columns represent the
opinion of the author. The Daily Ne
braskan’s publishers arc the regents,
who established the UNL Publica
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