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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 25, 1991)
N- 75/43 Today, mostly sunny and ■ v h h h breezy. Tonight, mostly ■ V ■ ^^^B ^^^B ■ ■ clear. Thursday, mostly , V* IL/X Clj l\m 1._sunny. H,gh657o 70 | —1.1 ... !!■ -m .-Tn« „,.. _ _ . Kll*y Tlmperley/DN Heavy metal.. . Kitty McGinnis, a graduate art education student, uses a hammer and chisel to remove a sprue, waste metal from the middle of her sculpture, during an advanced sculpture class. UNL competes for funding By Wendy Navratil Senior Reporter Nebraska’s eligibility for EPSCOR fund ing should be viewed as a boost, not an embarrassment, to the state’s research programs, UNL officials said. Bill Splinter, interim vice chancellor for research at the University of Nebraska-Lin coln, said the state became eligible for funding through the Experimental Program to Stimu late Competitive Research, after being classi fied as a state that did not have a “significant track record in research activities.” “We were not the top people in research — that’s the bad news,”,Splinter said. “The good news is that we just barely became eligible.” Don Weeks, director of the Center for Bio technology, said Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Ncb., worked to have Nebraska and Kansas declared EPSCOR states. Nebraska became eligible last spring for the first time. “This is a very definite opportunity to con tinue to build enhanced research programs and allow us to maintain a growing momentum,” Weeks said. If Nebraska successfully competes with the 17 other eligible slates and Puerto Rico, $3 to $6 million could be generated for Nebraska’s research programs, Weeks said. Ten to 12 states probably will receive the EPSCOR funding, Splinter said. Nebraska’s chances of competing success See EPSCOR on 6 .-z* _... ■ onusii nubiciyc iiccu. rayc 2. Crash in the rec center. Page 6. Few changes planned for Husker defense. Page 7. Tennis season set to begin. Page 8. Blues band crawls to town. Page 9. INDEX Wire 2 Opinion 4 Sports 7 A&E 9 Classifieds11 ! Study shatters notions about marriage * By Jeremy Fitzpatrick Senior Reporter Couples who live together be fore marriage are more likely to divorce than those who don't. This is not a common myth; it is one of the Findings of an 11-year study of divorce based at the Univer sity of Nebraska-Lincoln. David Johnson, chairman of the sociology department at UNL, has participated in the study with fellow UNL sociology professor Lynn White and assistant professor Paul Amato and Alan Booth, aprofessor of sociol ogy at Penn State University. The group has followed a national sample of 2,033 married persons, interviewing them in 1980,1983 and 1988. Another interview will lake place in 1992. Johnson said the study is focused on “marital instability over the life course,” or the factors that cause divorce. The findings, which have been published in about 25 journal articles since the study began, have attempted to shed new light on the causes of divorce. Johnson said onc-of the study’s major conclusions was its findings on the chances of divorce among people who live together. Their conclusion on cohabitation runs contrary to a popular notion of living together as a training period, he said. “It’s not the cohabitation experi ence itself that causes higher divorce rates,” he said. “It’s that people who cohabit tend to have characteristics of divorce.” He said people who live together tend to have a more casual view of relationships and have more personal problems. “The same values that make it appropriate for them to cohabit also make it more likely for them to di vorce,’' he said. Johnson said the group also dis covered that, contrary to popular opinion, marriages do not grow sig nificantly more stable over time. “What we find is that your odds of experiencing marital instability don’t change,” he said. He said that people who arc likely to divorce do so early. Marriages that survive tend to stay the same rather than grow stronger. “The process of being married longer doesn’t mean you are less likely to have a divorce,” Johnson said. He said the group also concluded that second marriages are not more prone to divorce than first marriages unless stepchildren arc involved. He added that women working outside the home adds both stress and stabil ity to a marriage. Johnson stressed the importance of working on strengthening relation ships early in marriages. “Our results show that the things you do early, you arc going to do later.” UNL comparatively sate, police chiet says By Lori Stones Staff Reporter The University of Nebraska-Lin coln is “one of the safest cam puses” in comparison to other Big Eight universities, UNL police chief Ken Cauble said. UNL ranked fourth among Big Eight campuses in 1990 in the num ber of crimes with 758, according to an FBI report. But, Cauble said, a higher city population could skew the number. Lincoln has about 100,000 more people than any other city with a Big Eight university. Felice officials at Big Eight uni versities say crime statistics reported to the FBI vary from campus to cam pus because of the demographics of the city in which the school is located, enrollment and the number of com missioned police officers at each school. Statistics for the ranking came from the combined number of violent and properly crimes. Violent crimes in clude murder/non-negligcnt man slaughter, rape, robbery and assault. Property crime includes burglary, larceoy/theft, motor vehicle theft and arson. At the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan., 960 crimes were reported in 1990, making it the high-.( est in number of reported crimes in the Big Eight. Lawrence has a popu lation of 65,608, including the uni versity. But Burdel Welsh, KU commu nity services officer, said 80 percent of the crimes committed on campus aren’t done by students. “At almost every institution, the crime rate is almost half of the city rate," he said. In Lincoln, the city crime rale is 70.1 percent and the campus crime rate is 31.6 percent, he said. Neal Slone, policcchicf at Univer sity of Oklahoma in Norman, Okla., said the location of the school ex plained the high crime incident at OU. That university ranks third with 818 reported crimes. Norman, a suburb of Oklahoma City, has a population of 80,071 and is near a major interstate. Nearly 1 million people visit the campus each year because of sporting events and other functions, Stone said. OU was the only Big Eight cam pus to have a murder committed in 1990. OU also had the highest inci See CRIME on 2 Crime statistics for Big Eight universities NCrime is defined in the following categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, Total Total Climes burglary, theft, vehicle theft and arson. Students reported Univ. of Colorado at Boulder 25,176 868 Iowa State 26,475 708 Kansas State 19,301 526 Oklahoma State 21,558 312 Univ. of Kansas 26,020 960 Univ. of Missouri at Columbia 23£68 706 Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln 23,985 758 nlv. of Oklahoma 22,225 818 AVERAGE 23,760 827.9 Source: U.S. Department of Justice Amie DeFrain/O