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Bill seeks
tax revenue
for colleges
Cigarette tax would provide
up to $2.6 million in funds
By Jeremy Fitzpatrick
Senior Reporter
LB 1027, a bill introduced in the Nebraska
Legislature by Sen. Chris Beutler of
Lincoln, would make the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln eligible to compete for up to
$2.6 million in public funding.
The bill, introduced Jan. 10, would use
revenue from a proposed 10-cent cigarette tax
to provide funding for
postsecondary education,
accessibility for the disabled
and environmental preser
vation.
LB 1027 would provide
$2.6 million, or about 2
percent of the proposed ciga
rette tax revenue, to the Nebraska Coordinat
ing Commission for Postsecondary Education.
The money would go into an incentive fund for
mostly short-term education expenditures.
The coordinating commission then would
distribute the money to postsecondary schools
See REVENUE on 6
Teleconference
urges openness
By Therrese Goodlett
Staff reporter
Homework was the key word used Thurs
day by a panel of administrators, fac
ulty and a student appearing on the
nationwide teleconference “Understanding and
Meeting the Needs of Gay, Lesbian and Bisex
ual Students.”
“I want people to do their homework,” and
learn to respect people’s sexual preferences,
said Rosalind Andreas, vice president for stu
dent affairs at the University of Vermont in
Burlington.
“We need to support people and help them
be whole,” she said.
About 100 people watched the videoconfer
ence in the Nebraska Union’s Regency Room.
The purpose of the conference, televised
live from Washington, D.C., was to find ways
to break students’ and faculty members’ homo
phobia.
Members of the televised panel agreed that
education was the answer.
“We need to create settings that are safe to
learn in,” Andreas said. “We need to study,
become informed and learn to create safe ways
of talking and discussing.”
Safe places to openly talk about homosexu
ality and “be out of the closet” were concerns
of two discussion groups following the tele
See VIDEO on 3 _
The Huskers, fresh off their
upset victory over Oklahoma
State, look to continue their
winning ways against Kansas
State Saturday. Page 7
A military transport plane
plunged into a motel and res
taurant in Indiana, killing at least
16 people. Page 2
A television documentary tells
the story of a forgotten chapter
in U S. nistory Page 10
INDEX
Wire 2
Opinion 4
Sports 7
A&E 9
Classifieds 11
. —in i..i 11 . 1 .*
Native American skeletons to be returned
Historical Society
to study, connect
remains to tribes
By Trevor Meers
Staff Reporter
□ he Nebraska Slate Historical
Society and the Nebraska Com
mission for Indian Affairs will
work together to identify about 300
Native American skeletons and re
turn the remains to the proper tribes,
an official said.
John Blackhawk, director of the
Indian Commission, said prehistoric
remains in the society’s collection
would be studied and returned to
Nebraska tribes for ceremonial bur
tai.
John Ludwickson, a society ar
chaeologist, said the remains presented
an identification problem because some
of the skeletons were more than 5,000
years old. He said the tribes they
belonged to no longer existed.
“Who do wc give them to?”
Ludwickson said. “There’s no exist
ing tribe to claim them. The materials
that we’ve got left arc very largely
unidentifiable.”
Ludwickson said the society’s
collection was not made up of com
pletely intact skeletons but individual
bones that represented skeletons.
Blackhawk said the society and
the commission would try to link each
skeleton to one of Nebraska’s four
present-day tribes. The tribes are the
Pawnee, Omaha, Winnebago and
~~ .1^
310UX.
“You can’t give a tribe remains if
they don’t belong to that tribe,” Black
hawk said. “Usually tribes handle their
burials as a distinct, sovereign na
tion.”
Blackhawk said some remains
probably would not be linked to any
modem tribe. The tribes would have
to decide as a group how to bury these
skeletons, he said.
Before the remains can be turned
over to the tribes, the skeletons must
be counted and studied, Ludwickson
said.
“We’ll try to identify them to how
many individuals we’re dealing with
and not just a mass of bones,” he said.
Blackhawk said the society had
estimated that the study and inven
tory of the remains would take two
years.
However, he said, the commission
is lobbying the Nebraska Legislature’s
Appropriations Committee for more
funds for the society. He said the
extra funds would go to hire more
research personnel to speed up the
process.
“We are trying to work with the
society to expedite the process,”
Blackhawk said. “It would probably
take less than a year if (stale legisla
tors) go along with our recommenda
tions.”
Ludwickson and Blackhawk both
said the project was a friendly ven
ture between the two groups.
“The society is concerned that they
do this in the most appropriate way,”
Blackhawk said. “We will assist them
in that."
Joseph Luther, assistant dean and associate professor of community and regional planning at the College of
Architecture, has focused on the survival of small towns and debated against the “Buffalo Commons" idea.
Rural revival
UNL professor makes plans to rescue small towns
By Sarah Scalet
Stall Reporter__ _
Joseph Luther lists the years he spent
in Vietnam one by one: “1965, ’66,
’67 and ’68.”
The wartime destruction Luther wit
nessed has carried him into a career as an
associate professor of community and
M regional planning at the
University of Nebraska
Lincoln.
“You saw so much
death and destruction
over there, and you saw
so many places being
WMBSMI —blown up,” he said.
“I think the years 1 have spent working
with communities to put things together is
kind of a compensation.”
During the war, Luther saved soldiers’
lives. Now he has turned his focus toward
saving the lives of small towns.
“In air rescue,” he said, “I was the go
fer. I was the guy that jumped out the door
and ran across the field, picked (wounded
soldiers) up, pul them over my shoulder
and ran back to the helicopter.”
Luther’s redirection toward saving
small towns began after he returned from
Vietnam, when the Texas native had what
he described as a “great revelation” while
sitting in an airport in Seattle.
After being in the air force for seven
years, eight months and two days, he de
cided to return to school'. Once he started
school, he said, he decided to teach.
His interest in applying national policy
to actual design and development of the
environment prompted Luther to become
interested in environmental design.
Luther went on to earn his doctorate
degree in environmental design at Texas
A&M in College Station after studying
physical geography and community and
city planning at Eastern Washington
University in Cheney.
Luther began teaching at Eastern
Washington University in 1974. In 1983,
he came to UNL.
For more than 20 years, Luther has
been helping small towns.
“I believe in small towns,” he said.
Luther, 49, grew up in Kerrville,
Texas, which had a population of about
7,000 people when he was growing up.
One of his main involvements is with
the “Buffalo Commons” debate. Devel
oped by Frank Popper from Rutgers
University in Camden, N.J., the “Buffalo
Commons” idea involves parts of the -
Great Plains faced with declining numbers
of people and farms since 1890.
Luther said Popper described the
decline as a failure.
“What (Popper) advocates doing is tak
ing a number of counties in Nebraska and
other states and getting rid of the commu
nities that are there, acquiring the property
for the federal government and converting
it into a reserve for buffalo,” Luther said.
But the declining number of people and
farms was caused by the changing nature
of fanning, Luther said.
“That doesn’t mean that people of Ne
braska have failed.”
Because of Luther’s experience, he was
asked to debate Popper at a national con- •
ference in 1990.
See LUTHER on 3