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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 31, 1992)
Opinion -LETTER TSe EDITOR Rhetoric ‘getting us nowhere’ I think it is fairly obvious that there are problems in this grand U.S.A., but bashing each other’s political parties by trying to outdo each other’s rhetoric has gotten us nowhere. I don’t know what those political science teachers teach, I’ vc on ly had one c lass and it was just a history class on government, but I think it is lime to go out in the field and do some re search, Malt McDonald (“Liberals uphold immoral views,” DN, March 19). Your solutions to crime arc theo retical. It never has been proven that killing everyone who kills is a deter rent. What needs to be done is some true investigation into why these crimes are committed. I would guess there is a strong correlation to the poverty and stress fell by many people who turn to illegal activities that eventu ally gets them in trouble. Poverty is the problem, not crime — that’s a result. If there were a few legal alter natives that could improve impover ished people’s economic situation there would be less crime. Also, as a political science major, you should know that the term femi nist came from the movement of women to get equal rights, ERA, etc. Equal rights for all is anything but Nazi. I don’t understand how one could use the two together. Or are you one of those people who believe the Nazis were trying to protect you? Your Christian ethic is paradoxical. This country was founded on free dom of religion yet you wish to abol ish all but your own. Sounds like a Roman or a Nazi. It certainly is not altruistic as 1 thought Jesus was (and I’m not even a Christian). And, if homosexuals want to be “immoral,” then maybe you should not have sex with them, and just let them “go to hell.” As far as the death penalty goes, should we “turn the other check” or is it an “eye for and eye”? Lastly, Oh! What a wonderful place this would be if we all could decide where our taxes went. I’d give all mine to the NEA and education and none to the military which now gets 50 percent to teach people to kill and hate people different than themselves. 1 also think that a little open-minded ne ; or at least tolerance is very im portant. I don’t espouse to any politi cal party for this very reason. Blindly jumping on the bandwagon in nation alist fever is another Nazi kind of thing to do. Be a “good” Christian if you want, but I’ve never known the conservatives to be anything but right eous and greedy. Gina Dikcman senior anthropology and art -EDITORIAL POLICY Staff editorials represent the offi cial policy of the Spring 1992 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its mem bers are: Jana Pedersen, editor; Alan Phelps, opinion page editor; Kara Wells, managing editor; Roger Price, wire editor; Wendy Navratil, copy desk chief; Brian Shellito, cartoon ist; Jeremy Fitzpatrick, senior re porter. Editorials do not necessarily re flect the views of the university, its employees, the students or the NU Board of Regents. Editorial columns represent the opinion of the author. The Daily Nebraskan’s publishers are the regents, who established the UNL Publications Board to super vise the daily production of the pa per. According to policy set by the re gents, responsibility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its students. kCfc«X- XSTCRS | -wm “Nfc. OOT t COKGRE5>?/ j "TO VWCO^WWTS ' -we.'OKRt »w- ufft A'tA. i BRIAN ALLEN Anti-cruising law ill-conceived I’ve heard of some unbelievably ridiculous and poorly conceived laws in my lifetime, but the Omaha City Council seems to be trying hard to pass the worst one yet. The council has passed an “anti cruising” ordinance to stop problems they associate with cruising on Dodge Street. The ordinance was passed 6-1 on March 24 and, appropriately, will go into effect April Fools’ Day, if it does not receive an unexpected veto from Mayor P.J. Morgan. The ordinance would make it a traffic violation to drive past a check point three times in two hours from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Violators would face up to six months in jail, a $500 fine or 30 days without a drivers’ license. On most issues of crime and pun ishment, I make George Bush look like Michael Dukakis. But these punishments seem more than just a bit severe, even to me. Come on — six months in the joint for driving down a public, tax-supported road three times 40 minutes apart is noth ing but sheer idiocy. Imagine this possible scenario: Joe Omaha gets home from the second shift a little after 11 p.m. and notices he doesn’t have anything to eat in the house. He starts out to his favorite 24 hour grocery store on Dodge and drives past a police checkpoint the first time. Because of heavy traffic in the right lane, Joe misses his lane change and turn into the store’s parking lot, so he goes down a few more blocks, turns and gets hack onto Dodge Street. This lime he can’t make a left turn into the grocery store because of the median. So he drives past the police checkpoint again and gets back onto the correct side of Dodge. Now in the correct lane on the correct side of Dodge, he drives past the checkpoint for a third time and turns into the grocery store. Before he can even buy a loaf of bread, he finds himself in the back of a squad car driven by a couple of boys in blue. Joe is looking forward not only to half a year in the slammer, but also to the probable loss of his job and cus tody of his children as a result — all for missing that first right turn and "cruising Dodge” one too many times. Imagine what this law could do to out-of-town visitors to Omaha, who if vou had to am out la get something such as groceries soon after arriving at mtr house, vou would have to hang out at the grocery stare far two hours before vou legally could drive back home. don’t really know where they’re going. Spend five minutes driving back and forth looking for your hotel some evening and spend the next 30 days without a drivers’ license for violat ing an ill-thought-out law of which most people never even heard. The plan is to have police officers sit at checkpoints on Dodge Street and type the license numbers of pass ing cars into a couple of lap-top computers. Because traffic officers arc not hired for their exceptional secretarial skills, I wonder about the ability of these officers to avoid typographical errors, which would lead to possible wrongful prosecution. Suppose license number 1-H314 drives by, but is incorrectly typed as 1-H324 by an overworked officer trying to enter the license number of each and every car driving along Dodge Street. Then the driver of the car whose license number really is 1 H324 legally drives by twice arid boom — busted and off to the Big House. This law seems to have a certain amount of publ ic support. The Omaha World-Herald quoted business own ers and residents near “the strip” as saying they were upset about the cruising because they thought the cruisers “breed traffic congestion, trespassing, vandalism and occasional violence.” Proponents of the law have pledged more than S5.000 to buy the jap-top computers for police use, but it takes a lot more more than the unthinking support of a few people to make a good law — for instance, constitu tionality. Sure, cruisers tend to breed traffic congestion, but 1 wonder if these resi dents and business owners thought about the possible problems they may be bringing on themselves by trying to alleviate the problem this way. After all, this law would apply to residents and business owners on Dodge Street as well as cruisers. Imagine if it were illegal for you to drive home, leave and then come home again in less than two hours. If you had to run out to get something such as groceries soon after arriving at your house, you would have to hang out at the grocery store for two hours before you legally could drive back home. If owners or employees of late night businesses located on Dodge Street come to work after 9 p.m., then go out for supplies and come back, they will break the law. This law will not help these residents and business owners. It will make life impossibly inconvenient for them. As for trespassing, vandalism and violence, why don’t we try to deal with these crimes themselves, instead of making it illegal to drive in down town Omaha. I don’t see how it can be constitu tional to make it illegal for people to drive on a road for which their taxes paid. If Omaha’s cruisers can’t drive on their own roads, they should quit paying a proportionate amount of their taxes. That sounds like a reasonable form of protest to me. The members of the city council already have passed their anti-cruis ing ordinance. Their only hope now is that Mayes’ Morgan vetoes it and saves them and other supporters from the embarrassment of realizing this ordi nance will not end any problems. It only will create them. Allen Is a junior mechanical engineering major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor from all readers and interested others. Letters will be selected for publi - LETTER POLICY cation on the basis of clarity, origi nality, timeliness and space avail able. The Daily Nebraskan retains the right to edit or reject all material submitted. Submit material to the Daily Ne braskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448.
