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Lobbying group requests investigation
By Wendy Navratil
Senior Reporter
Common Cause/Nebraska asked
Attorney General Don Sten
berg to investigate whether
the Board of Regents and UNL have
violated state open meetings laws
Monday.
As of Wednesday, the group had
received no response from Stenberg,
and the attorney general’s office re
ported that he had not looked into the
matter yet.
Bill Avery, a University of Ne
braska-Lincoln political science pro
fessor and a spokesman for Common
Cause, said the group drafted a re
quest that Stenberg look into the Budget
Reduction Review and Academic
Planning committees’ policies of
closing some of their meetings over
budget reduction proposals early last
week.
Avery said the regents general
affairs subcommittee meeting that was
held in private late last week com
pounded the urgency of resolving the
issue of whether laws were being
violated.
“Stenberg is obligated to look into
it,” Avery said. “I’m not in the posi
tion of rendering a legal opinion, but
neither is (NU General Counsel) Dick
Wood.”
Avery said that Common Cause/
Nebraska, which is part of a national
grassroots organization that lobbies
for the public interest, was not satis
fied with the legal opinion of Wood.
Wood’s opinion upheld the legality
of the closed meetings being held by
the regents subcommittee and the
BRRC and APC.
Avery said Wood could not render
an impartial opinion as an employee
of the university.
David Brooks, a UNL professor of
chemistry education, curriculum and
instruction and a BRRC and APC
member, said he was against holding
meetings of the BRRC in closed ses
sion.
But his objection is not based on
the state open meetings law, he said.
“It has to do with the purpose of an
academic institution — teaching,
openness. I don’t think you can have
a meeting of 22 people and call for
confidentiality. I’m a democrat. I
believe they should make it public.”
Brooks said the meetings would
merit closure to the public only if the
“specifics of a specific case” were
being discussed. Because he doesn’t
think this has been the case, he has
abstained from voting to go into closed
session.
Regent Charles Wilson of Lincoln
said he thought that the regents would
have been sensitized to closing meet
ings after receiving criticism for its
conduct in recent years.
“I intend to address this issue at
least in a one-on-one way with my
colleagues. I think we all need to
recommit ourselves to adhering to the
spirit as well as to the letter of the
law.”
Official makes
plea for sparing
classics program
By Jeremy Fitzpatrick
Senior Reporter
Arguments that the Department
of Classics is not cost-effec
tive arc absurd, the depart
ment chairman told the Budget Re
duction Review Committee in a final
plea Wednesday.
“How do such
absurd calcula
tions come out?
They come out
when people try
to manipulate
numbers to prove what cannot be
proven,” Valdis Leinieks said.
Leinieks spent most of his testi
mony attempting to refute an evalu
ation of classics by Stan Liberty, in
terim vice chancellor for academic
affairs.
Liberty recommended cutting the
program as part of the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln’s budget-culling
process. Cuts of 3 percent over the
next two years were mandated by the
Legislature last spring.
But culling classics doesn’t make
sense, Lcinieks said.
“The vice chancellor didn’t think,
and didn’t think of the consequences
and didn’t look at the evidence,” he
said.
He argued that three criticisms of
the department — that its entry level
classes arc too large, that it docs not
undertake quality research and that
its resource allocation is not being
used efficiently — are misguided.
“Small classes are not always the
best,” he said. “Trained instructors in
large classes arc better than a small
one with untrained professors.”
The department’s faculty arc quali
fied, he said. Three of six professors
in the department have received dis
tinguished leaching awards in the past
10 years, and all six have finished or
are finishing books this year.
He called Liberty’s analysis of the
department’s resource allocation
“complete nonsense.”
In addition, Lcinieks said, if clas
See BUDGET on 3
Budget cut committee
cramps time schedule
Teachers forced
to delay tasks
By Kara Morrison
Staff Reporter
Since budgel-culting procedures
began in September, 25 UNL
faculty and staff members have
had a lot less of one resource: time.
In addition to their regular sched
ules, some members of the Budget
Reduction Review Committee esti
mate that their BRRC duties, which
are unpaid, are taking about 25 hours
a week to fulfill.
These committee members have
been reviewing and hearing appeals
for proposed University of Nebraska
Lincoln budget cuts.
The budget cuts arc in response to
a Nebraska Legislature mandate that
the university cut 3 percent of its
budget over the next two years.
Desmond Wheeler, a professor of
chemistry and member of the BRRC,
said that about 70 hours of hearings
took place in October alone.
In addition to the hearings and
meetings scheduled through Decem
ber, a significant amount of prepara
tion lime is required, Wheeler said.
“There are mountains of letters
and statements to be read,” he said.
Rita Kean, interim department
See BRRC on 3
Soviets get food aid. Page 2
2
ASUN planning committee gets 4
OK. Page 3 5
3
The bare facts about nudity. 4
Page 5 <^y,
Linden thinks of protests.
Page 7 ' T7f
_ i 1 _ .
Michelle Paulman/DN
Anna Quindlen, columnist for The New York Times, speaks at the Cornhusker Hotel
ballroom Wednesday night for Family Service’s 100th Anniversary Banquet.
Family affair
Speaker says moms and dads must work together
By Stacey McKenzie
Senior Editor
New York Times columnist
and author Anna Quindlcn
told a crowd of about 500
people at the Comhuskcr hotel
that the family has changed in the
last 20 years “but not enough to
make it work.”
Quindlcn spoke at the 100th
anniversary celebration of
Lincoln’s Family Service, a
private, non-profit human service
organization.
Issues of the family are at the
forefront of many of Quindlcn’s
“Public & Private” columns. She
is also the author of a collection
of essays called “Living Out
Loud."
Although society has changed
and sometimes improved laws
and institutions in an effort to
help families, Quindlcn said, it
hasn’t changed the way that men,
women and children deal with
each other.
“What we need is radical
change in the entire way that
men, women and children live
together,” she said. “We need to
understand each other better.”
A mother can face confusion,
crying on the first day that she
returns to work because she has
to leave her children, Quindlcn
said. Yet, the educated woman
who stays home with her children
can face frustration because she
is afraid her brain might turn to
mush.
Quindlen, a mother of three .
and the second woman to write a
column for the New York Times
opinion page, has faced this
career/mother dichotomy.
When she was 25, Quindlen
said she would never have
children.
At that time, she said, “I
would have walked over my
grandmother in golf spikes to do
two columns a week.”
The New York Times
granted her wish in 1981 when she
began writing a column called
“About New York.”
Then Quindlen became preg
nant with her first child. She an
nounced to her editor that she
needed six months of maternity
leave and later told the editor
that, ‘‘I wouldn’t be back.”
The paper made certain allow
ances, though. With the addition
of each child, Quindlen’s job ad
justed to the point where she now
writes many of her columns at
See QUINDLEN on 2
