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AS UN president says quotas
not constitutional violation
By Lisa Donovan
Senior Reporter
The membership quota set to fill two stu
dent government committees does not
violate an ASUN constitutional bylaw,
ASUN President Phil Gosch said.
Gosch said he will defend the committees’
representational apportionment, which is being
challenged by UNL law student Clark
Sackschewsky. Sackschewsky filed a request
Tuesday for the Student Court to examine the
legality of the quotas set to fill the ASUN
Racial Affairs and Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual
committees.
Whether the membership quotas set in By
laws M and L violate a student government
bylaw and Nebraska statute as contended by
Sackschewsky, is a matter of interpretation,
Gosch said.
Bylaw L states that the Racial Affairs
Committee will consist of one Native Ameri
can, one Caucasian American, one African
American, one Asian American and one inter
national student as selected by the Appoint
ments Board.
Under the provisions of Bylaw M, the
Gay\Lesbian\Bisexual Committee will consist
of one heterosexual, one gay, one lesbian and
one bisexual.
According to Sackschewsky’s statement to
the Student Court, Bylaws M and L place
limitations on committee membership, which
is a violation of Bylaw 1.
Bylaw 1 states: “ASUN may not discrimi
nate in the selection of members or appoint
ments on the basis of a person’s age, race,
national origin, color, gender, creed, handicap,
sexual orientation or place of residence.”
Sackschewsky’s statement also said the quota
system violates one of the Nebraska Revised
Statutes, which reads: “No person shall be
deprived of the privileges of this institution
(University of Nebraska) because of age, sex,
color or nationality.”
Gosch countered that Bylaws M and L did
not violate state law because that only applies
to committees which have the power to allo
cate student fees.
“The committees serve in advisory capacity
and do not violate state, university or ASUN
constitutions or statutes,” he said.
Business Sen. Shawn Smith, one of the
authors of the legislation creating the commit
tees, said he wanted to double-check the by
laws and make sure there are no violations.
Smith said he would defend Bylaws M and
L if they are constitutional, and he thought
those bylaws may be amended if the student
court finds ASUN in violation of its constitu
tional bylaws.
Business Sen. Tim McAuliff said he thought
the bylaws would be amended if the court rules
they violate the ASUN constitution, But he
said he was sure there wasn’t a problem.
“I think it’s kind of ridiculous and nitpicky,”
McAuliff said of the allegations that the quotas
were not legal.
The students who make up the committees
are not getting a fair voice in student govern
ment, McAuliff said, and the bylaws solve
some of that problem.
“The committees were set up not as a re
striction, but as an opportunity,” for all stu
dents to be represented, he said.
Although Kendai Garrison, president of the
Gay/Lesbian Student Association, said he had
no problem with the bylaws, he was concerned
about the fate of the committees.
“The way it’s set up is a way to get equal
representation,” he said.
Civilian casualties mount in gulf
DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Allied
warplanes, in a pinpoint bombing that
sent shock waves far beyond Iraq, de
stroyed an underground shelter in Baghdad on
Wednesday, and officials
there said 500 civilians
were killed. _
The United States
called it a military com
mand center, not a bomb
shelter.
By nightfall, 14 hours
alter the pre-dawn attack,
crews still were pulling charred bodies, some
of them children, from the demolished struc
ture, an Associated Press correspondent re
ported from Baghdad. Distraught relatives
crowded the smoke-filled streets.
Iraq’s health minister, Abdel-Salam Mo
hammed Saeed, described the precision bomb
ing as “a well-planned crime.”
But the U.S. command in Saudi Arabia, and
later the White House, said the subterranean
concrete facility had been positively identified
as an Iraqi military command-and-control center.
“We don’t know why civilians were at that
location,” said Marlin Fitzwater, President Bush’s
spokesman. American officials blamed Iraq’s
leadership for the tragedy, saying it had put
civilians “in harm’s way.”
The AP correspondent, Dilip Ganguly, in
spected the ruins with other journalists and said
he saw no obvious sign of a military presence.
Another new report of civilian casualties
came from Jordanian refugees who reached
their homeland Wednesday from Kuwait. They
See WAR on 3 -
Joe Heinzle/Daily Nebraskan
No nones about it
Peggy Jones, a master’s of fine arts student, draws the skull of a human
skeleton model Wednesday in Morrill Hall.
Instructor’s discovery alters view ot Antarctica’s past
By Michael Hannon
Staff Reporter
A recent discovery by David
Harwood, an assistant profes
sor of geology at UNL, is al
tering accepted views of Antarctica’s
ancient past.
Harwood, who returned from
Antarctica last week, found a deposit
of fossilized leaves that is 2 1/2 to
three million years old.
The finding contradicts some ge
ologists’ assumptions that the conti
nent was covered by a sheet of ice
during that period.
The previous view of Antarctica
was based on oceanic conditions and
a series of assumptions that linked
those conditions to conditions on the
Antarctic continent.
Harwood said ideas of Antarctica’s
past, based upon those mistaken as
sumptions, will have to be rewritten.
“We have to go back to the draw
ing board to try to come up with a new
set of assumptions,” he said. “The
real significance is that it changes the
way we need to think about Antarc
tica in the past. This vegetation sug
gests that the climate there (from three
to 40 million years ago) was never as
cold as today.”
The new theory, formulated by
Harwood, was developed by looking
directly at the rocks and fossil record
of Antarctica.
Harwood’s theory poses that the
ice sheet was unstable and that it
melted and reformed 10 to 15 times in
the period from 40 million to three
million years ago. According to Har
wood, the water released from such a
melting would be sufficient to raise
the sea level by 120 feet and cover
most of Florida.
This was Harwood’s fourth trip to
Antarctica. On previous occasions,
he has made other discoveries to
support the idea that Antarctica was a
warmer continent in the distant past.
About seven years ago, he found
fossil microorganisms that on ly could
See DISCOVERY on 3
Diversions fea
tures the healing
arts from many
lands. Page 7
What’s old, new
and blue in wed
dings. See the
Wedding Supple
ment.
~ INDEX I
Wire 2
Opinion 4
Diversions 7
Sports 15
Classifieds 16
_
Arab students criticize U.S. gulf policy
By Carissa Moffat
Staff Reporter
□nited States involvement in the
Middle East is an extension of
a policy that began after World
War I to divide the Arab world, a
University of Nebraska-Lincoln stu
dent from Iraq said.
“For more than a year, Iraq has
been rebuilding its armies, and the
United States was looking for a chance
to dismantle and destroy this effort,”
Nadeem Yousif said Wednesday at a
Nebraska Wesleyan University fo
rum about the Persian Gulf war.
Yousif, a doctoral candidate in
English, said the Arab world was united
from the 16th century until 1927 under
the Ottoman Empire.
In fact, he said, Kuwait once was a
part of Iraq, but in 1927, the British
and French divided the Arabs into
many countries, a policy the United
States is continuing.
Iraq’s attempts to unify the Arab
world have frightened the United
States, which doesn’t want another
world superpower, Yousif said.
He said the Arab countries’ one
resource that could make them a
superpower—oil — is the reason the
United States now has troops in the
Persian Gulf.
“The Arab world is rich with oil,
and this oil is a curse,” he said. “Young
men and women arc getting killed by
ruthless leaders because of oil.”
Zafcr Abrass, a UNL architecture
graduate student from Syria, said oil
was the reason Iraq invaded Kuwait
in August.
Kuwaitis were overproducing oil
and driving down world prices, and
they ignored Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein’s peaceful attempts to warn
them, he said.
Then, after Iraq invaded Kuwait,
he said, the United States refused to
negotiate with Iraq.
But Yousif said oil is not the only
problem in the Middle East. The U.N.’s
treatment of Israel also has worked
against the Arab world, he said.
“Israel has taken more than it was
granted in 1947, and the United Na
tions didn’t go and kick them out," he
said. “So you sec the double standard
of the United Nations."