Eric Planner, Editor, 472-1766
D<lilV Bob Nelson, Editorial Page Editor
Tk T tj -/ 1 Victoria Ayotie, Managing Editor
fV] A c hrn T1 Jana Pedersen, Associate News Editor
JL ^8 hr JL CI.IJJvTWCJLi. ft. Emily Rosenbaum, Associate News Editor
University of Nebraska-Uncoln Diane Brayton, Copy Desk Chief
Brian Shellito, Art Director
I
Hi her standards
UNL needs stricter admission policy
Several months before students enroll at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, they receive a handsome “certificate
of admission” in the mail. What does it mean?
In effect, it is a second high school diploma. It signifies that
a student has walked through high school for four years — or
the equivalent — and managed to stay out of the principal’s
office long enough to get a bound piece of paper. Hardly an
impressive achievement.
But it’s good enough to get into Nebraska’s land-grant,
rese^ch institution, ostensibly the most academically rigorous
public university in the state.
Instead of diverting “marginal” college students to a suitable
environment, Nebraska admits them to UNL. After their
freshman year, most of these students — more than a quarter of
the class — end up at state and community colleges anyway.
Or they drop out of education entirely, the victims of unnatural
expectations and Willie Horton-style revolving-door higher
education.
Finally, some university officials are addressing the prob
lem. Unfortunately, they are doing so for the wrong reason.
Nebraska’s self-infiictcd budget crunch has forced some
administrators and regents to speculate that UNL will have to
become more selective not because they want to improve
academics, but because the university can’t afford more
students.
More competitive admissions standards ironically could
: become the only positive side effect of the heavy dose of fiscal
conservatism the government is trying to force down UNL’s
I throat.
opponents or mgner standards argue mat uinl, as a state
school, should not become elitist. But higher admissions
* requirements would have no such effect.
If the university solved the budget problem by raising tuition
f rates, that would be elitist. It would keep financially strapped
students away and let the elite attend.
Obviously, UNL should not become a competitive “Harvard
of the Plains.” But in Barron’s ranking of college selectivity
last fall, UNL came up “non-competitive,” the least selective
I rank. Gcarly, UNL could become somewhat stricter without
threatening the Ivy League.
Admissions standards are not the same thing as academic
quality. UNL docs recruit and attract some of the state’s best
students. But UNL professors can only do so much. If they
have to teach remedial courses more suited to state colleges,
? they waste costly, state-financed time.
Nebraska government has been committed over the last few
years to improving me university by upgrading the faculty.
J Armed with double-digit salary increases, UNL has hired
“ professors from a national market.
The faculty, however, makes up only half of a university’s
assets. The other portion is the students. Their admissions
certificates should mean something.
— E.F.P.
Handbook focus misdirected
The University of Nebraska-Lin
cotn recently has published and dis
tributed a handbook on rape preven
tion. I looked through it and became
extremely angry to see a perfectly
good idea applied in such a dumb
way. The handbook contains the fun
damentals like “don’t walk alone at
night,” but it omits the buddy system
of going to parlies, where women
travel in pairs, and never leave a
drunk friend behind. It addresses
women as victims, but it fails to ad
dress the victimizcrs.
The handbooks were distributed to
all the sororities and women’s dorms,
but not to the fraternities or men’s
dorms. Why in the hell not? If every
woman is a potential victim, then
every man is a potential rapist. Just as
everyone knows a rape victim, every
one also probably knows a rapist.
Rape is a man’s issue. We must
take responsibility for it if we hon
estly want to stop it. Admitting there
is a problem is the first step to solving
it.
I believe rape to be the predomi
nant male sexual fantasy in America,
the kind where “she secretly loves it.”
But good luck finding some guy to
admit to it. It’s the crime that men
commit, but don’t talk about. Ac
tions, such as rape, arc codified by
certain ideas and attitudes, such as
demeaning jokes about women. So
long as it’s “just a joke,” those atti
tudes are “harmless.” But our ideas
and attitudes arc what give us our
identities. If you talk garbage, chances
arc you think garbage. Think of
somebody you know who laughs real
loud at Andrew Dice Clay’s jokes.
Then ask yourself honestly, “Would
he treat my girlfricnd/sistcr/daugh
tcr/mothcr with respect, or would she
be just another slut in his eyes?” Then
ask yourself, “Do I have a little bit of
that in me, too?”
Most women arc self-made ex
perts on rape prevention; they have to
be just to survive here. Telling them
how to avoid rape is like telling a
cabbie how to drive.
I would strongly suggest that a
second version of this handbook —
targeted toward men — be published
immediately. If only for one reason
that I noticed in this handbook. In a
recent survey, college males were
asked, “If you knew you could rape a
woman and gel away with it, would
you?” Sixty percent answered, “Yes.”
Joe Bowman
senior
anthropology
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LISA DONOVAN |
Violence for a greater good? I
A few years ago, one of my Eng
lish professors decided to show
the film of Shakespeare’s
‘King Lear.” I had to get up and leave
during the scene in which one of the
characters was shown getting his eyes
plucked out.
It was a gruesome and horrible
depiction that could have been por
trayed with much more subtlety.
But, hey, that’s art.
The other night, I watched a video
of a colleague who was competing in
a kickboxing tournament — he was
knocked silly during the second round
and went down. I watched him
through the cracks of my fingers
take a bloody nose, swagger and fall.
But, hey, that’s the spirit of com
petition.
Monday morning I picked up the
Daily Nebraskan to read about seven
“altercations” at a University of
Nebraska-Lincoln fraternity’s fund
raiser. There were fights inside the
ring and outside, as well. The Lancas
ter County Sheriff’s Department re
ported that one student was hit in the
head with a chair and another kicked
in the face.
But, hey, that’s the spirit of philan
thropy.
Violence is a strange phenomenon
that seems to lurk in the netherworld,
but is still a part of our lives.
Society is handed so many signals
that we hardly know what is socially
acceptable. You know, like the hy
pocrisy behind a police force’s war
on crime. Or hiring a police guard for
a so-called civilized boxing tourna
ment—just to ensure that no fighting
breaks out in the crowd.
The line between what is staged
and tthai is real becomes fine and
difficult to define.
Folks just aren’t satisfied with the
more uncontrived natural violent
phenomena like, say, Saddam’s crimes
against the Kurds or even seeing for
the 220 billionth time the granddaddy
of them all: Rodney King being beaten
senseless by members of the Los
Angeles Police Department.
There is a difference between real
life blood and gore and Shakespeare,
my friend Bob getting the crap kicked
Maybe this is
goodtherapy for po
tential rapists, can
nibals gr guv of
those nocturnal
folks who slick their
hair back, have
fangs and sleep up
side down all dav.
out of him in a kickboxing tourna
ment and a fraternity holding an ass
kicking event to raise money for
emotionally disturbed children.
But many find there is a connec
tion between the real life, and the
stage.
Newsweek conducted a poll show
ing that 40 percent of those inter
viewed thought movie violence was a .
“very great cause of real-life vio
lence, and 28 percent thought it was a
“considerable” cause of violence.
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese told
Newsweek, “Maybe we need blood
letting like the ancient Romans — as
ritual — but not real circus.”
Maybe this is good therapy for
potential rapists, cannibals or any of
those nocturnal folks who slick their
hair back, have fangs and sleep up
side down all day.
In the same article one mental
giant said he conics out of movies like
the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and
“Alien” feeling “refreshed.” It would
equal, say, a nice littie jog on the
beach or a walk through fresh flowers
on a cool spring morning.
The rationale here is that if a man f
goes out and murders 33 people it is a
societal outrage, but if Arnold Sch
warzenegger is re-enacting it, then
it’s like 15 minutes in a whirlpool.
Bui as sure as we turn off the 5
p.m. news horrified at the news of a
rape at the Kennedy compound, many
of us will pop into our VCRs the
portrayal of similar violence—all,of
course, in the name of entertainment.
According to Newsweek, civilized
folks like you and me spend $1.5
million annually on renting “action”
videos. These of course include great
landmark and mind-expanding films
like “Robocop” and “National Vel
vet.”
I’ve never been a big fan of action
packed films like “The Terminator”
and “Rambo.” I’ve heard people talk
about how funny and cool these shows
can be. Conversations usually run along
the line of: “Remember that one part
when he took that nuclear-scud raygun
and blew off that dude’s left arm after
he started eating that chick’s ears off.
Yeah, that was cool.”
So I am to understand there are
some real reasons behind prostituting
violence: entertainment, fun, philan
thropy.
Well, students will be students,
but it is interesting to contemplate the
whole idea of two people voluntarily
jumping around and punching each
other into oblivion.
It’s probably no worse than foot
ball, but at least violence happens to
be only a bad side effect of that game.
Sanctioned violent fighting like box
ing makes little sense as sport.
Even stranger is that people pay to
sit around and watch it. At Friday
night’s Fight Night, a few of them
even became entranced by the mo
ment and began a brawl of their own.
Thai’s not the kind of ritual we
need.
Donovan Is a senior news-editorial ma
jor, a Daily Nebraskan columnist and senior
reporter.
--EDITORIAL POLICY-- I
Initialed editorials represent offi
cial policy of the spring 1991 Daily
Nebraskan. Policy is set by the edito
rial board.
The Daily Nebraskan’s publishers
are the NU Board of Regents, who
established the University of Ne
braska-Lincoln Publications Board to
supervise daily production of the
paper. According to the regents’ pol ®
icy, responsibility for the editorial®
content lies solely in the hands of the®
newspaper’s student editors.
