Opinion
No fair
UNL parking endorses caste
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln parking depart
ment has finally gone too far.
Parking officials have decided that UNL is a
capitalist enterprise to justify changing 500-600 prime
parking spots into faculty-only reserved spaces, charging
up to $265 per spot.
“The question is are we going to operate on capitalist
principles or are the rich going to subsidize the poor?”
Business Manager Ray Coffey said.
Who the rich subsidizers are in this situation he doesn’t
say. Maybe the university?
The parking department’s move sends the wrong
message to students and faculty members — that they
don’t deserve equal treatment.
Perhaps we should charge more for prime classroom
seats? Or we could have students bid to take the classes
most in demand. Such a move surely would bring in more
money for the beleaguered university, which is facing
increasing costs on all fronts.
Why don’t we? Because it simply wouldn’t be right.
The university treats all students the same after they have
paid certain required fees.
The same should be true of the $50 parking fee. After
faculty members and students have paid it, they should be
free to fend for a prime parking space with everyone else.
To put parking to a different standard, the university
merely endorses special treatment for wealthier faculty
members and students.
Such a caste system, in which poorer students and
faculty members have to waste an hour each day walking
to their classes (leaving less precious time for studying),
merely propagates the inequality the university is t^ing to
destroy.
_ — Victoria Ayotle
for the Daily Nebraskan
Peer pressure
Regents react properly to reexamination question
The NU regents took a positive step in healing old
wounds with the Legislature when they decided to
reexamine the peer group of institutions to which
UNL compares itself for faculty salary purposes.
The regents’ relationship with the Legislature was
soured after the calamitous presidential search last year.
State senators denounced the search and introduced what
seemed revenge legislation, such as a bill calling for the
recall of regents.
One seeming response was made by the Appropriations
Committee, which hired outside consultants to come up
with a new peer group for the University of Nebraska
Lincoln. Senators charged that UNL had used an invalid
peer group to justify high faculty salary raises.
The regents made the right move by responding to peer
pressure and admitting that some adjustments may be
needed.
Such a step builds faith that the regents are not just
power-hungry officials working in their own interests.
— Victoria Ayouc
for the Daily Nebraskan
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CHRIS POTTER
Multiculturalism empty if positives forgotten
Most readers arc probably aware
by now of the epithet “politi
cally correct,” directed to
ward advocates of pluralism, toler
ance, and muliiculturalism. Naturally,
these advocates reject the derogatory
title. Most of them are reflective re
formers who want to give equal rep
resentation to all cultures and elimi
nate intolerance based on race, sex,
religion and sexual orientation. Their
cause is just.
But a few of these advocates de
serve the epithet. They would foster a
rigid orthodoxy, and paradoxically,
in striving for muliiculturalism, re
ject all of Western culture as funda
mentally corrupt. These liberal fanat
ics have learned nothing from conser
vative McCarthy era repression, or
worse, have adopted its methods.
Consider the slogan chanted at a
recent student demonstration at Stan
ford: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western
culture’s got to go.” Or consider the
words of a converted white male Ivy
League practitioner of PC, published
in a letter to Mother Jones magazine:
“... white, male-dominated, Western
European culture is the most destruc
tive phenomenon in the known his
tory of the planet. ... It is deeply
hateful of life and committed to death;
therefore, it is moving rapidly toward
the destruction of itself and most other
life forms on Earth. And truly, it
deserves to die...”
Is this serious criticism or a call for
a savage cultural holocaust?
Granted, much of the history of the
West comprises brutal subjugation
and racist repression. The effects of
Western imperialism still reverberate
in violent revolutions across the world.
Much of Chinese insularity and au
thoritarianism may be attributed to
the greedy 19th century Western
powers that plundered one of the oldest
The idea that West
ern culture is mono
lithic, to be taken whole
QL WL at OIL ii false.
and richest civilizations in history.
American Indians lost their land to
what can only be called an invasion
(it was certainly not “colonization”
or “discovery”) by Europeans. In South
Africa, European settlers imposed a
racist government on the native popu
lation.
But the PC critics of Western cul
ture seem to be speaking of all aspects
of the West, not just its more heinous
manifestations. Surely the Western
philosopher Spinoza’s meditative
reflection on a pantheist universe is
not “the most destructive phenome
non” in known history. Surely the
intellectual discourse depicted in
Raphael’s painting “The School of
Athens,” Newton’s laws of motion,
James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” and
the construction of the Apollo space
craft have not so mutilated our world
that only the total eradication of
Western culture will heal it.
In many cases, though, the PC
practitioner pronpunds just such ab
surdities. In social sciences such as
sociology or political science, there is,
admittedly the possibility that subtle!
remnants of the negative ideological
components of the West remain. But
even the supposed bastions of objec
tivity, mathematics and the physical
sciences, are held to propagate a rac
ist and heterosexisl bias. Simply be
cause most of the fundamental prin
ciples of these sciences were discov
ered by white heterosexual European
men, PC zealots infer that the prin
ciples themselves must be inherently
intolerant and oppressive. Such an
inference does an injustice to the
seminal contributions of, for example,
Marie Curie in physics, Subraman
yan Chandrasekhar in astrophysics
and Alan Turing in computer science.
The idea that Western culture is
monolithic, to be taken whole or not
at all, is false. Negative elements of
the West’s heritage can and should be
discarded, but the positive elements
must not be. Similarly, the negative
elements of other cultural legacies
must be discarded in favor of a true
multicultural, tolerant, non-racist, non
sexist, unprejudiced outlook. Surely
people’s minds arc large enough to
accommodate Plato, Joan of Arc
Newton and Washington alongside
Lao Tzu, Khayyam, Ghandi ant
Mandela. If not, mulliculluralism if
an empty slogan.
At worst, criticism of PC degener
ales into conservative rhetorical po
lemic devoid of substance. At best, i
condemns a very real zealotry tha
threatens serious scholarship. Th
challenge to faculty members, ad
ministrators, and students across th
United States is to achieve a fair rep
resentation of all cultural legacic
without the extremist dogmatism c
PC orthodoxy.
Potter b a senior physics, phllosoph,
math and hbtory major.
BUT
General?
