Survey uncovers doubts in administration
Minority students
report diversity
as unrecognized
By Chris Hopfensperger
Editor
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' x ■ ' V •
Editor’s note: This is the final
part of a four-part series on the
findings of the UNL Racial Climate
Survey.
Judging by the results of a recent
survey, an official said minor
ity students at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln were not impressed
with the administration’s efforts to
address their concerns.
Vaughn Robertson, assistant di
rector of student opportunities and
services, said the results of the UNL
Racial Climate Survey revealed a lack
of faith in the administration from
minority students.
“Racial minority students arc not
convinced that UNL’s leadership is
sincere about inclusiveness,”
Robertson said.
Robertson was a member of a small
group Friday that examined the re
sults of the survey regarding adminis
trative and policy concerns.
The survey, conducted last spring,
asked questions of 433 randomly se
lected, full-time undergraduate stu
dents: 100 African-Americans, 50
Asian-Americans, 67 Hispanics, 15
Native Americans and 201 non-mi
norities.
Nearly 68 percent of the African
American students said they did not
believe the administration and fac
ulty recognized the diversity of UNL
students, compared with 8.7 percent
of the non-minority students surveyed.
Minority students also said the
university must address the lack of
minority administrators and faculty.
Almost 74 percent of the African
See SURVEY on 3
A look at what parcantaga of atudanta said yaa to tha following quastion:
Should UNL have scholarship
programs to attract minority students? '
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Source: UNL Racial Climate Survey__ |
Scott Maurer/DN
Robin Trimarchi/DN
N. Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and member of the Kiowa tribe, answers questions Wednesday
afternoon before addressing a full house at Kimball Recital Hall. Momaday’s speech was part of the Healing the
Hoop Native American conference.
Power of myth
Native American novelist says stories define a people
By Mindy Letter
Staff Reporter
N Scott Momaday is a storyteller.
As his bass voice boomed
• through Kimball Hall Thursday
night, the Pulitzer Priz.c-winning novelist
reinforced the power of myth as the
defining trait of Native American people.
“Belief is an essential part of the
Native American world,” he said. “In fact,
belief informs the very definition of
Native American.”
It is important for people to define
themselves, Momaday said. Momaday is a
member of the Kiowa tribe and an English
professor at the University of Arizona at
Tucson.
Momaday’s speech was the opening
address of Healing the Hoop, a conference
on the history, religion, spirituality,
ceremony and celebration of Native
Americans.
He said the origins of Native Ameri
cans who crossed the Bering Strait long
ago were shrouded with speculation and
controversy.
“The shelter and clothing and weapons
have not survived the elements,” he said.
“However, some of the manufacture of the
early Native Americans was impressive
— achievements that verged on great art.”
This art is evidence of his ancestors’
ascension into an infinite and eternal
world, he said, an ascension that required
an act of the imagination.
“I would like to think of that isolated
little figure on the land bridge, imagine
that he’s trudging along, and ask, ‘Who is
he?’
“He is human. He has the instincts and
skills and indispensable tools for survival.
He is a nomad and a hunter, he’s small
and vulnerable in the vast landscape, he
lives in terror day after day. He is in
possession of fire — and language.”
He said that his ancestor, being in
possession of language, had thoughts to
himself.
“He was a storyteller.”
He credited stories, particularly those
passed along in the Native American oral
tradition, with the transmission of valu
able wisdom from generation to genera
tion.
He said storytelling was the way
people coped with the awesome natural
world.
“Years ago, my ancestors saw some
thing after the great migration that must
have made them gasp,” he said. “In the
Earth rising out of the hills was the
Devil’s Tower ... standing like the stump
of a gigantic tree.”
«
He said the Kiowa tribe explained
Devil’s Tower with a story of eight
children who were playing alongside a
slump. The brother changed into a bear,
and the seven girls hid on the slump,
which grew taller to save them. The bear,
angered, raked the sides of the stump with
his claws, and the sisters ascended into the
heavens to become the seven stars of the
Big Dipper.
From that moment, Devil’s Tower has
belonged to the Kiowa people, he said.
Storytelling is how people explain an
experience that is alien, he sqid.
“The storytellers take something at a
distance and make themselves at home in
the world,” he said.
C
Construction
on 10th Street
cuts student,
staff parking
By Jeff Zeleny
Staff Reporter
About 75 student and staff parking spaces
will be lost beginning today for a five
part construction project on 10th Street,
a parking official said.
The area 10 and 20 parking lot north of
Memorial Stadium will be closed during the
project, which is scheduled to be completed by
September 1993, said Mike Cacak, University
of Nebraska-Lincoln interim parking adminis
trator.
. The remote lot by the Bob
Dcvaney Sports Center and
the area 1, 2 and 20 lot at
22nd and Vine streets pro
vide the best alternate park
ing spaces, Cacak said.
Parking citations will not
be given to students and staff
who park in those lots, provided they have a
UNL permit, he said.
See PARKING on 2
Senate opposes
higher admission
recommendations
By Angie Brunkow
Staff Reporter
Additional foreign language requirements
for incoming students at the University
of Ncbraska-Lincoln are unnecessary,
student senators said at the AS UN meeting
Wednesday.
The Association of Students of the Univer
sity of Nebraska voted 10-9 to withhold support
for the lightened admissions standards pro
posed by the UNL Admissions Policy Advisory
Committee. -
The proposal would require incoming stu
dents to have two more years of both a foreign >
language and math, and one more year each of
natural science and social science in high school.
Right now, foreign language classes arc not
required for admission.
Ryan Swanson, architecture senator, said
students would not have time in their schedules
to satisfy the additional foreign language re
quirements if they hadn’t fulfilled them before
staging college. *
“I don’t know any architecture major that
has the time,” he said.
Bryant Knocrzcr, agriculture senator, agreed.
He said most students did not need a foreign ,
See ASUNon 3
j