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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 19, 1991)
Eric Pfanner, Editor, 472-1766 13 d 11V Nel son, Editorial Page Editor "j^ T _ J _ Victoria Ayotle. Managing Editor |\! apfe C JLT La Tj Jana Pedersen, Associate News Editor X ^1 V< KSA. * *■ Emily Rosenbaum, Associate News Editor University of Nebraska-Lincoln Diane Brayton, Copy Desk Chief Brian Shellilo, Art Director I Barriers to women Regents must address inequality Y f the NU regents are still unaware of the unequal treatment that women faculty members deal with at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, they will have no excuses after today. Disparities between male and female faculty salaries, hiring rates and other gender-related issues will be discussed during a special Board of Regents forum at Varner Hall. The regents surely will be told the findings of the Chanccl j lor’s Commission on the Status of Women, which documented the barriers that women continue to face at UNL. Only 16 percent of UNL faculty members are women, and just two UNL colleges arc hiring women at a rate proportional to the available pool. On the average, the salaries of women faculty members are $6(X) lower than those of their male counterparts, the commission reported. I nose hndings arc not news; the commission released me statistics last summer. But until now, the regents have failed to \ take concrete action to change these inequities. Political science Professor Susan Welch, the chairperson of : the chancellor’s commission, is leaving UNL because of the ! lack of advancement for women. UNL could lose more valuable instructors like Welch if steps aren’t taken to keep them here. The Women’s Caucus of the UNL Faculty sent a letter to the l regents Thursday, asking them to carry out the chancellor’s j commission’s suggestions. The recommendations included | hiring more women administrators, implementing family leave 1 and day-care policies and paying equal salaries. The board should take the suggestions to heart. The prob j lems women continue to face at UNL will not disappear | magically, without concerted action by the university’s govern ing body. The regents need to make a commitment to recruit more women faculty members. But the board also needs to put forth guidelines so that those women aren’t made to feel inferior to | male professors. The chancellor’s commission showed that UNL lags behind | other universities in its treatment of women. It’s time to change that. — J.N. - LETTERS tt,?e EDITOR Emotions are found in military Congratulations, Matthew Lamb! I’m giving you the award for stupid est letter to the editor ever (and in world where Andrew Meyer exists, that’s no small feat). I was appalled, then amazed at the complete and utter lack of any rational thought exhibited in your letter (DN, April 18). If I understand you correctly, you should be barred from military service be causeyou would sacrifice the lives of your fellow soldiers if one of them was female and you had fallen in love with her. As you said, “that emotion does not belong on the battlefield.” I further understand you to be suggest ing that only unmarried eunuchs be allowed to serve, to eliminate the risk of anyone ever falling in love and causing themselves a conflict of inter est. I found these suggestions interest ing in the light of extensive coverage during the Persian Gulf war of the number of women and couples who were involved. Obviously the mili tary does not share your preference for single people. I also recall an article published in U.S. News and World Report that mentioned the amount of partying going on in the gulf. It seems that single heterosexual soldiers were unable to control their heterosexual lust. But then again, as you pointed out so eloquently, “... it is stupid to say that (people) would not be able to control their sexual urges in the face of fellow soldiers whom they find attractive.” I know that personally, I feel a great deal of fear that some day a heterosexual male will be unable to control his sexual urges if he finds me attractive. It seems to be a common fear for many women. But I guess we should all just resign ourselves to being the potential victims of someone’s un controlled urges. Margie Winn senior advertising Rodeo far from loving, tender To hear Dr. Pfeiffer (DN April 16) describe a rodeo, we should be com forted that the steers were bulldogged with “loving care,” the calves roped with “tenderness” and the bulls’ flank ing straps cinched with “compassion.” I sincerely hope none of us are ever treated that humanely. I have had people tell me they treat their livestock “like family,” while pushing them up the slaughterhouse ramp. Others tell rne, while loading their rifles next to their grizzly rug and elephant tusk ashtray, that they care more about wildlife than any “college boy.” Some tell me of their “reverence for life” as they don lab coats and force crack addiction onto a chimpanzee snatched from his mother at a few weeks of age. What have we become when we rationalize living beings into things? Is human sadism to blame? I doubt sadism is the word, although indiffer ence seems a likely candidate. I would therefore condemn this, and therefore the “sport” of rodeo just as strongly, for as George Bernard Shaw remarked, “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hale them, but to be indifferent to them. That’s the es sence of inhumanity.” Eric Moss graduate student electrical engineering ■ ■ ■ V * DAVID DALTON Water raises moral dilemma I’m giving up water. Sounds drastic, I know, but I’ve come to realize that the years I’ve spent as a water drinker (hydro vore, in science talk) constitute the most heinous ethical vacuum in my entire life. Now, before you start writing let ters, I want everyone to know that I don’t have anything against water, as such. But there is so great a tangle of moral dilemma surrounding the stuff that I have no choice but to give old H20 the boot. The reason is simple. Every adult who’s gone through this nation’s public school system has at one time or other been forced to collect an eyedropper full of pond water and examine it under a microscope. And every adult knows that in a drop of water arc any number of little blurry living things. Considering how many of these animals you can find in just a single drop, a glass of water must be an absolute metropolis, microorganically speaking. So when you drink it, that means thousands of lives lost to the horrors of either digestion or chlori nation, depending on which part of the world you live in. It’s a well-known fact that if you eat a hamburger, you’ve killed a cow. But only part of a cow, really, be cause lots of people can feed them selves off the same animal. Not so with our friend the amoeba. Ounce per ounce and life per life, drinking a glass of water is the far greater trag edy. Protozoa, lack, by nature’s design, the benefit of big balef ul eyes. How ever, it would be speciesist of me to mete out life and death based on that criterion alone. And whether your later years are to be spent either chew ing cud or floating around and ab sorbing each other, it all seems equally valuable to me. So water and I are officially through. A big step, yes, but that’s just the beginning. You sec, I consider my self a trendy guy. I dress impeccably. 1 can whistle any of the latest tunes on the spot, even with my head immersed in a vat of La Croix. But despite this, 1 realize that on a Really. how can you say two con flicting ideas have equal merit while still,believing in one or the other? It makes no sense whatever, lot of issues I’m behind the times. So I’m on a quest to weed out my back wardness. For example, I’m also giving up my friends. We all, I hope, know how important it is to be sensitive to oth ers’ feelings. So what’s the problem, you’re asking. A story to illustrate: About a week and a half ago, some friends and I drove up to Wayne State to see Edie Brickcl and New Bohemi ans. After the show, I wanted to hang around and say “hi” when the band walked out to its bus, but it was cold out and I was essentially left with the option of following my buddies back to the dorms or be abandoned. So my near brush with greatness wafted sadly into the breeze, all because of my friends’ insensitivity and my inabil ity to do anything for myself. Ya, big deal. But friends are al ways pulling garbage like that, even when they don’t mean to. The more time you spend around anyone, the more likely it is that they’ll hurt your feelings in one way or another, and most of the time there’s nothing any body can do about it. I didn’t have any right to ask them to freeze. Ah, but this defies the first law of sensitivity, which is: feel good. We can work it out. Harmony, etc. Though, as we’ve seen, the best way to decrease harmony is to in crease contact. And the best way to increase contact is friendship. Hence, ax the friends. Not that they’ll mind. In truth, I’m about a thousand times worse. Then, I am giving up grammar. Not because I’m no good at it; that’s a different matter entirely. I’m giving up grammar tor the reason that it is nothing more than a power game for people who aren’t clever enough to sell things like the amazing Abdom inizer over the television and must settle for venting their frustrations on college students. You all know the type. We realize, of course, that lan guage is metaphor, and it never means the same tiling for two people. There fore, everyone has to find their own idiom — their own linguistic “space.” Grammar and syntax, as given to us by white European males, do nothing but constrict thought and make us all less ourselves. Heck, I’d sure rather be myself, but sadly, I’m forced in this situation to conform to some rather rigid laws. But I’ll bend them for just a second so you can get a taste of the magic that happens when you throw the rules out the window: thE re””IGN in sPeln? 9fall)s hackneyed. Cumquats! Need I say more? Finally, I am giving up everything I believe in. Bearing in mind the urgency of developing a fine appre ciation of diversity, the thought of having any beliefs at all becomes ridiculous. Really, how can you say two con flicting ideas have equal merit while still believing in one or the other? It makes no sense whatever. So I’m not going to believe any thing. There’s no truth. Nothing’s better than anything else. The Beatles aren ’t the greatest band in history. The sky isn’t blue. There’s no such thing as a parking problem. There’s no such thing as parking. I’m not writing this col umn. There’s no reason to do any thing, because there isn’t anything! At all! There’s no ... no uh ... hm. No reason to be trendy? I wonder. Actually, I wouldn’t mind that at all. I’m almost starting to feel a little thirsty. Dalton Is a junior secondary education major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. -LETTER POLICY The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor from all readers. Letters will be selected for publication on the basis of clarity, originality, timeliness and space availability. The Daily Nebraskan retains the right to edit letters. Letters should be typewritten and less than 500 words. Anonymous submissions will not be published. Letters should include the author’s name, address, phone number, year in school and group af - filiation, if any. Submit material to the Daily Ne braskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448.