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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 14, 1991)
Opinion Tick, tick, tick ... Process going in circles, losing time Week 2, or rather Round 2, of the University of Ne braska-Lincoln budget hearings begins today. The hearings are part of the budget-reduction process started after the Nebraska Legislature mandated that UNL cut its budget by 3 percent over the next two years. Round 1 of the hearings ended Friday with some sur prises. The Academic Planning Committee said UNL should retain faculty members who are tenured or who have tenure-leading positions and should consider how the proposed cuts will affect gender-equity goals. While Thomas Zorn, chairman of the Budget Reduction Review Committee and the Academic Planning Commit tee, said the resolutions did not guarantee that no depart ment would be cut from UNL, he pledged that tenure and gender-equity goals would be emphasized. “It may mean moving tenured faculty to another depart ment, or it may mean changing the structure of the de partment or leaving the department as it is,” Zorn said. “We haven’t acted on specifics yet.” The BRRC already has said it wants to keep the Department of Speech Communi cation. And strong testimony Friday from members of : UNL’s College of Home Economics Robert Borzekofski/ON emphasized gender related impacts of the proposed cuts to that college. Joan Laughlin, associate dean of the home economics college, said the proposal to slash one-fifth of the col lege’s budget stems from “inherent unrecognized biases of people who made the recommendations.” If the BRRC accepts the testimony from home econom ics, the proposed cuts to that department also may be rejected. Today, the Department of Classics will defend itself from the budget ax. If the APC follows through on its promises, the tenured and tenure-track faculty members in that department will be retained. The APC also wants UNL colleges to receive more hard budget data to examine for the purposes of response to the BRRC The committee seems to agree with the Academic Senate that UNL’s faculty has been excluded from pro viding input into the budget cutting process. And, really, the message all around from faculty mem bers is that the budget-cut proposals are inadequate. While the APC recommendations appear to make the budget cuts more tolerable, they also make it more cum bersome, to the point that the budget-reduction “process” is becoming little more than tail-chasing. Given enough time and information, any area slated for cuts could front an insurmountable defense. But time is running out. l he deadline tor budget cut recommendations to reach the new chancellor’s desk is December. Perhaps the process has been doomed from the start. But the sparring between faculty members’ desire for equity and administrators’ demand for reductions must end somewhere. And soon. “We have some extremely difficult decisions to make,” Zorn said. “What we’ve done is going to make it more difficult to accomplish what we have to do. It’s creating a greater challenge for the administration and for us to find those real dollar savings.” Zorn doesn’t underestimate the task ahead. Horizontal cuts have gone about as far as they can go. Vertical cuts will damage the equity goals the APC has committed itself to preserving. Those options exhausted, the budget cutters have few places to turn, except to their own tails. —jp -vi i>i *,x. ■ ■ unp to! 1 : ^ [\nv\kv. KW se s*NooucfcC> KS TV\fc WRfclKG£RS OP tv\u io* ce^UR^ o\wapvons OFFOUTyCAL- C^RRtCUSmiO 1>WKS / \JETT'5 SAW. ON TO WsnJM\ lUSTCAP . ERIC PFANNER Neil Armstrong, murderer Oct. 14, 2469. I ARMSTRONG, Mars — Earthlings, like most primi tive people, have many supernatural legends. One of their favorite tales is about a man on the moon. They imagine that the physical features of the moon, its craters and valleys and mountains, make up this man’s face. Like most legends, it is rooted partly in truth. The moon wasn’t always the dead, barren place it is now. Five hundred years ago, before it was “discovered,” civilization flour ished on the moon. There were all sorts of diverse peoples, plants and animals. Now it is as dead as Earth’s Lake Eric. The destruction was brought about by one man, astronaut Neil Ann strong, the man whom we honor as the founder of our new civilization. You sec, back in the 1980s and ’90s, when the history books were written, they lied. me nooks saia Armstrong was part of a beneficent program to ex tend human knowledge about space, a quest to broaden Earth’s under standing of the universe. The history books also said the inhabitants of Earth looked at Arm strong as a hero, as a trail-blazing pioneer who opened the human mind to flights of imagination and dreams about events never before thought possible. In 1969, Armstrong set off on a journey into the unknown. Half a millennium later, people finally arc starting to realize that he was one of the greatest butchers of all time. “The eagle has landed,” they said when his craft descended onto the moon’s surface. More like the vulture. Armstrong’s career is a chronicle of exploitation. It all began when he was growing up, when he used to read Tom Swift books over and over. The books talked about crackpot ideas such as space travel and rocketry. At night, instead of sleeping, Armstrong would lie outside and stare In 1969. IVeil Arm strong set o ff on a journey into the unknown. Half q miL lennium later, people finally are signing ta realize that he was one of the greatest buiehen oJLalL time at space. Pretty soon, Armstrong started having crazy dreams. He got the idea that he could find any easy way to get to Mars and bring its riches back to Earth. But Armstrong had a problem. He had no money to finance such a trip. So he started making the rounds of the world’s capitals, looking for money. He went to Moscow, capital of the Soviet Union. There, he met with Leonid Brezhnev, the emperor. When Armstrong told his story, Brezhnev laughed in his face. The Soviets had their own space program, marked by the launching of the Sput nik satellite in 1957. They wanted no part of Armstrong’s cockamamie scheme. They thought he would fall off the edge of the universe. So Armstrong went next to a rival space-going power, the United Stales of America. At its court in Washington, Arm strong met, charmed and seduced the American queen, Pat Nixon. He con vinced Queen Pat that his idea was not crazy. Queen Pal agreed to finance Arm strong’s travels. She equipped him with a spaceship and told him to plant the American Hag on any territory he might encounter. In return, Armstrong agreed to govern the planets he con- | qucred and to give 10 percent of the treasure he found to the American government. So Armstrong set out on his voy age into the unknown. Soon, he spied a great sphere that his spaceship was approaching. Armstrong landed on the sphere. Little did he know that it was only Earth’s moon and not another planet. Because he thought he had landed on Mars, he called the people he met there “Martians.” Then, he proceeded to destroy them. What’s amazing is that Armstrong was singlehandedly responsible lor the destruction of this entire world. Within days of his arrival on the moon, he had enslaved or executed its entire population, destroyed its vegetation and animals and stolen all the valu ables. These treasures he put in his spaceship and look back to Earth. Armstrong retumcu 10 me mwn several times. He continued to steal things from the few people who were still alive. The American government was not happy with the meager amount of treasure that he brought back after the first trip. They wanted more stuff. At the same time, space explora tion was becoming increasingly ex pensive. The American empire, then in a period of decline, could not af ford to continue its space program. After his fourth trip to the moon, Armstrong retired. He died a wealthy but bitter man. Then, they started writing the his tory books. With every generation, the false myth of Armstrong’s great ness grew. After 500 years, it’s time to re write those books. It’s lime to erase the myths, the insidious lies of his tory. Pfanner is a senior news-editoriaJ jour nalism major, the Daily Nebraskan opinion page editor and wire editor and a columnist. —-—-EDITORIAL POLICY signed stall editorials represent the official policy of the Fall 1991 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its members are: Jana Pedersen, editor; Eric Pfanncr, editorial page editor; Diane Brayton, managing editor; Walter Gholson, columnist; Paul Domeicr, copy desk chief. The Daily Nebraskan’s publishers arc the regents, who established the UNL Publications Board to super vise the daily production of the pa per. According to policy set by the rc genis, responsibility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in Lhe hands of its students.
