I Hiring freeze
I may not bum
I UNL campus
By Dionne Searcey
I Staff Reporter
Administrators probably will not
clamp a hiring freeze on the
- University of Nebraska-Lin
coln like the across -the-board restric
tions made at UNO in response to
proposed budgetcuts, an official said.
Stan Liberty, interim vice chan
cellor for academic affairs at UNL,
said he doubts UNL will experience
I overall restrictions on hiring admin
Iistrators, faculty and staff members.
Administrators announced an
overall hiring freeze at the University
of Nebraska at Omaha on March 19,
said Louis Cartier, director of univer
sity relations at UNO.
Cartier said the freeze at UNO is a
result of the Appropriations Commit
tee’s preliminary budget proposal that
calls for 4 percent across-the-board
cuts to state agencies.
Liberty said UNL officials must
consider the proposed budget cuts,
too, but an overall freeze could cause
departments to lose good job candi
dates.
“We don’t want to gridlock insti
tutions by freezing everything up in a
panic,” he said.
Cartier said UNO also faces the
possibility of losing good people but
“serious problems require serious
measures.”
Liberty said UNL is seeking an
alternative to a hiring freeze that re
sponds to possible budget cuts.
See FREEZE on 3
Midi Kuncl of Alpha Omicron Pi takes the lead against Lisa Sickert of Alpha Phi during the Phi Psi 500 held Saturday on S
Street, The 500 is an annual philanthropic event sponsored by Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
Panel debates access of crime reports
By Lisa Donovan
Senior Reporter
Following a recent Missouri court deci
sion that allowed access to campus crime
reports, a flood of debate has spilled
onto campuses nationwide about whether the
names of student suspects should be released
for public record.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is no
different.
Traci Bauer, editor of the student newspa
per The Southwest Standard at Southwest
Missouri State University, spoke at the UNL
this weekend about her 1989 attempt to obtain
information regarding an alleged rape that
involved a basketball player. Bauer sued the
university because she was denied access to the
crime report.
Bauer was one of five panelists who spoke
Saturday before an audience of about 100 in
Avery Hall as part of a forum on “Access to
Campus Crime Reports.”
The U.S. Department of Education has said
federal funding could be removed from schools
that release crime reports under the 1974 Buck
ley Amendment. Southwest State University
denied Bauer access to the report because of
the Buckley Amendment.
The district court ruled last month that the
amendment, which says that student reports
cannot be released for public record, does not
apply to campus crime reports.
Many of the panelists said the Bauer case
could change the whole notion of releasing
campus crime reports.
John Bender, an assistant news-editorial
professor at UNL, said there are two different
perspectives stemming from the debate on
availability of campus crime reports.
One is the consumer perspective, which
states that someone who is looking into attend
ing a college or university should have access
to campus crime statistics, he said.
Bender cited the case of Howard and Connie
Clery, whose daughter was beaten, raped and
murdered in her dormitory room at Lehigh
University in Pennsylvania in 1986.
Apparently the campus had had problems
before the Clery murder, but university offi
cials had not made the problems public, Bender
said.
The Clerys sued Lehigh and used the $2
million settlement to establish Security on
Campus, Inc., which works to gain access to
crime reports.
It’s important for students, employees and
prospective college students to have access to
crime statistics so they can make informed
decisions about where they want to work or
attend classes, Bender said.
“Students can make better consumer deci
sions on what colleges and universities to at
tend.”
The other perspective is the journalists’
point of view, Bender said. Journalists have a
responsibility to report what’s going on, he
said.
Bender said that right now, the Department
of Education is using the 1974 Buckley Amend
ment, otherwise known as the Family Educa
tional Rights and Privacy Act, to keep all
student records privileged.
The Education Department has interpreted
the act to mean that campus crime reports that
may include student suspects should be privi
leged information. The department can with
hold federal funding of colleges and universi
ties that don’t comply.
Bender said that although the Education
Department has used the act to inhibit the
release of campus crime reports, the Bauer case
See PANEL on 3
/ yj j Hanna investi
> n*.,*. gates the UNL police
X) department. Page 11.
^ The United
XL J') States supplies the
* ( l Kurds, warning Iraq
!, | ”—7 / not to interfere. Page
IL ^ A 2
J A UNL student
^ starts a write-in cam
paign to become Lincoln’s mayor. Page
3.
UNL women receive award for volun
teerism. Page 6.
The Nebraska baseball team sweeps
Colorado State. Page 8.
INDEX "
Wire 2
Opinion 4
Sports 8
A&E 11
Classifieds _
Speaker: Disparities affirm policy’s need
By Tabitha Hiner
Senior Reporter
The only way to end racial and gender
disparities is through Affirmative Ac
tion, despite its costs, an economics
professor at American University in Washing
ton, D.C., said on Friday.
Barbara Bcrgmann told a group of about
160 people at the College of Business Admini
stration that disparities can be proved in many
ways and that inequalities won't change unless
Affirmative Action is implemented.
“You can’t change it just by saying, ‘Come
on, try to hire blacks,”’ she said.
Affirmative Action usually is advocated by
arguments that look at the past and future, she
said, but the real justification lies in present
disparities.
The “backward-looking” argument states
that past discrimination against blacks can be
attributed to their preparation for the job mar
ket and that Affirmative Action is needed to
make up lor past treatment, Bergmann said.
The “forward-looking” argument claims that
the world isn’t going to be a happy place as
long as gross racial disparities exist, she said.
The argument states that “we’ve got to
shoehorn blacks into the better jobs just so we
can get their incomes up,” Bergmann said.
“Both of these arguments . . . make the
assumption that the reason blacks don’t have
these jobs is that they arc unworthy to have
them,” she said.
These arguments play along with the com
petition myth embedded in society, she said.
That myth is based on the assumption that a
business hiring workers to improve profit only
will look for productivity when hiring, Bergmann
said.
Women whose salaries are 70 percent of
men’s salaries and blacks who cither aren’t
hired or who arc hired at lower salaries than
whites’ salaries intrude into that paradise, she
said, because they show that productivity has
not been the only consideration.
“Needless to say, this demand that we make
an effort to increase the number of black people
hired by a certain employer... clashes with this
norm we have in our mind,” she said.
Quotas and timetables should be used to
implement Affirmative Action, Bergmann said,
but their use should vary with each case.
Bergmann handed out copies of a possible
discrimination situation to the audience to show
how economics students at American Univer
sity responded.
The situation was an altered Supreme Court
case in which no blacks had been hired for
hundreds of entry-level jobs.
After the students were asked their recom
mendations concerning the case, Bergmann
said, 40 percent supported goals and time
tables.
Because the case was seemingly cut and
dry, Bergmann said, she would conclude that
people’s attitude toward Affirmative Action is
not related to the degree of racism or sexism
that occurs.
