xt 1 Daily t £==?
I \| O r*% “S^ ^ C? ftX' f*!
^bJ §B^ B ■ m ^8B|& im B H day-mostly cloudy-30 p®r*
I B| m ffi Jr B B JB ■ w SI « B SH Sf cent chance of rain or snow,
A Pi^ JB* it high near 40.
_ ___ _ km
Regents expected to OK
UNO, UNK pay raises
By Dionne Searcey
Staff Reporter
The NU Board of Regents is ex
pected to approve collective
bargaining faculty salary in
creases for UNO and UNK at its
meeting Saturday, arousing concerns
about the future of salaries for UNL
faculty members.
The University of Nebraska at
Omaha and the future University of
Nebraska at Kearney, which joins the
NU system July 1, will ask the NU
regents to approve salary agreements
Saturday at the board’s^iionthly
meeting.
UNO will request a 6.5 percent
increase and UNK will request a 8.72
percent increase for next year, as
outlined in the collective bargaining
agreements.
The University of Nebraska-Lin
coln does not have a collective bar
gaining arrangement, however, so no
contract will be approved. The re
gents will decide UNL faculty sala
ries after the Nebraska Legislature
approves budget decisions later this
spring.
George Tuck, president-elect of
the Academic Senate, said faculty
members have received pay increases
the last three years without collective
bargaining.
For the past three years, university
faculty and staff members received
increases of more than 10 percent
each year as part of an initiative to
bring NU salaries to the midpoint of
those of its peer institutions.
This year, Gov. Ben Nelson has
proposed an increase of only 3.75
percent because of a tight stale budget.
The Nebraska Legislature’s Appro
priations Committee made a prelimi
nary budget that would give univer
sity faculty a 4 percent increase.
To make faculty salary increases
higher than those the Legislature
approves, the university would have
to reallocate resources, raise tuition
or both.
Academic Senate President James
McShane said he doesn’t know if
UNL will receive the same salary
increases as UNK and UNO, but he
was concerned because of the low
increases proposed by the governor
and the Appropriations Committee.
Cutting programs is troubling,
McShane said, if the university de
cides to reach the 10 percent salary
raises requested by the regents to the
See REGENTS on 5
Massey declines pedestal
New ASUN president
promises open door
By Adeana Leftin
Staff Reporter
After two almost sleepless nights
and a day full of calls from
reporters, relatives and friends,
ASUN President-elect Andy Massey
is tired.
“You never really prepare your
self to win,” he says. “All of a sudden,
your role changes.”
But Massey says that in spite of the
fact that his role in the Association of
Students of the University of Nebraska
has changed, he won’t.
He says that if he were treated
differently he wouldn't be able to
relate to the average student.
“As an average student, I don’t
want to be put on a pedestal,” Massey
says.
Being approachable is important
to Massey. He says he thought Uni
versity of Nebraska-Lincoln students
believe the ASUN president is unap
proachable.
“I’m not the best politician,” he
says, “but I’ve always tried to be
approachable.”
Massey says that if a student came
to him with a problem that he didn’t
agree with, he would find a senator
who did. And he hopes students will
bring their problems to ASUN.
But, Massey says, part of that re
sponsibility is theirs.
“We’re here to serve the students
and they need to realize that — that
the door is open,” he says.
Massey says he will expect a lot of
hard work and dedication from the
senators.
He is planning to gel the senators
prepared for the upcoming year by
having a retreat the weclTend after
their installation on April 3.
At the retreat, Massey says, he will
give senators a packet of facts about
See MASSEY on 3
... jrxiziflli ■ miiihi
Michelle Paulman/Daily Neb* ask an
The party’s over
A student walks past deflated ASUN campaign balloons near the Collegeof Business Admini
stration on Tuesday.
Registration by phone on hold
By Eric Pfanner
Editor
Beth Eslinger needed a study
break on an afternoon last
October. Instead of ordering
pizza, she decided to register for
spring semester classes.
Eslinger, a junior English major,
called the registration computer
from home on her touch-tone
telephone. She keyed in codes for
four courses in English, one in
political science and one in history.
Before she went back to her
books, a mechanical voice listed her
confirmed schedule. The call took
about five minutes.
Eslinger doesn’t have a special
phone. She goes to Iowa Slate Uni
versity.
Iowa State is one of two Big
Eight schools that have installed
touch-tone registration. The other is
the University of Colorado. Five
Big Eight schools register students
with individual sessions at com
puter terminals.
The University of Nebraska-Lin
coln is the only Big Eight university
that still uses course request forms.
It’s the only university that isn’t “on
line”— students don’t immediately
get confirmed schedules when they
finish registering.
Some UNL officials defend the
system, saying it is more flexible
and efficient than the on line
terminals. But most agree that a
move to the cutting edge of technol
ogy — touch-tone registration
linked to an integrated database of
student records and information —
would benefit administrators,
professors and, most of all, stu
dents.
“It’s certainly something we
want,” said Ted Pfeifer, UNL
director of registration and records.
Until December, it looked like
See REGISTRATION on 6
State could make waves in relativity theory
By Kristie Coda
Staff Reporter
Nebraska has thrown its hat into the ring
to be the home of a $200 million scien
tific project aiming to finally prove a
portion of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativ
ity, a UNL professor said.
“This would be a whole new kind of astron
omy,” said William Campbell, professor and
vice chairman of the physics and astronomy
department at the University of Nebraska-Lin
coln.
The project involves building a pair of labo
ratories 1,500 to 3,000 miles apart to detect
gravitational waves from distant, massive,
accelerating astronomical bodies such as super
novae and binary stars, he said.
The project, called the Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-Wave Observatory, is a joint
venture between the California Institute of
Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Campbell said detection of such gravita
tional waves finally would verify Einstein’s
theory of relativity prediction of the existence
of gravity waves from massive objects.
Other aspects of the theory have been ob
served and recorded, but the technology has
not existed to detect gravitational waves, which
belong to an entirely different spectrum from
light waves, he said.
Although Einstein’s theory has not yet been
physically proved, indirect and theoretical ■
See LAB on 3
The curtain comes down on
the Husker men’s basketball
season. Page 7.
INDEX
Wire 2
Opinion 4
Sports l
A&E ,2
Classifieds_12,
Gender amendment fails to pass
By Jeremy Fitzpatrick
Staff Reporter
An amendment to change all
gender references in the AS UN
constitution failed to pass
Wednesday despite the fact that two
thirds of students who voted on the
issue approved of the change.
The amendment would have
changed all references in the Asso
ciation of Students of the University
of Nebraska constitution from he or
him to she/he or her/him.
The ASUN constitution stipulates
that an amendment must be “ratified
by a two-thirds majority vote of the
eligible students voting in the elec
tion.”
More than two-thirds — 1.472 of
2,153 — of ihc sludcnls voting on the
amendment approved it. But 228 of
the 2,381 students who cast ballots
did not vole on the issue, so only 61.8
percent of the total voting sludcnls
approved it — not enough for it to
pass.
Sandra Haughton, the Division of
See GENDER on 3
Gender Neutral Amendment
R Vote on the proposed gender
^ neutral constitutional amendment:
I 1,472voted to change all
m reference of he to she/he or a|
I her/him in the ASUN I >.
constitution.
gjjj 681 voted to keep all H'l
I reference of he in the ASUN r:
I constitution. |jj ^
