Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 1993)
!>1 H \U \l> \Ms Just can’t cure the winter blahs It’s February and I’m dysfunc tional. It happens every Febru ary. Before there was dysfunc tion, I was depressed. Before depres sion, I was crabby. Back on the farm, I had something stuck in my craw. Call it what you will, I’m just sick of winter. Things that normally don’t bother me will drive me nuts in February. I use my fingers in traffic a lot more often. I become oversensitive to criti cism. I told one particularly animated professor that he was nothing but one of a bunch of cigar-smoking, high blood-pressured, pasty-faced, over weight, sour-mash-lilung men. I’m looking forward to that grade. By February I have an arrested sense of time and place. The snow will never go away. There will never be leaves on the trees again. No flow ers will bloom and no songbirds will return. My feet will never again be warm. The world will forever alter nate between frozen polar ice cap and melting feedlot. I would be fine if society would let me behave according to my own pe culiar circadian rhythms. I would spend February in bed, drinking wine and blaming my father for my inabil ity to make huge amounts of money by partially exposing my breasts. Instead, 1’U continue to try and follow the advice of the health com munity in an effort to cope with some thing they're calling Seasonal Affec tive Disorder. The big recommenda tions have remained the same since the Greeks first wrote them down. They are diet, sleep, exercise, fresh air and frame of mind. I will eat acarefully balanced diet, except for those 16-tour days with 10-minute breaks. Then I’ll probably forget to eat until my body starts I won’t worry. I won’t think about the accumulated interest on my norvdeferred school loans or the paperwork faux pas that could mean that I have to start paying them this week. digesting itself, at which point I will seek the type of superior quality food form that one can obtain at a drive through window with meter change. Then I’ll consume it in the company of various other diners on Holdrege Street who are also trying to reach C.Y. Thompson Library before it closes. The rest of the time I’ll man age to get something from the four major food groups: rice, fruit, pop corn and chocolate. 1 will maintain regular sleeping patterns, as long as that means four hours on Sunday night, 15 minutes in the ladies' lounge on Monday after noon, a half-hour in Spanish class and so on until the big sleep on Saturday afternoon. Anything less erratic doesn’t ac count for an army of bored professors gathered in some teacher laboratory* lounge, wringing their hands and laughing maniacally about schedul ing all their exams during the same week. They do it for us feeble-minded students who can’t seem to memorize 5,000pages of text in 10 minutes. Tell them that you’re having difficulty keeping up with the reading and they say, “Other people are doing it!”l find this very helpful. Exercise is not a problem. I’ll just start for campus a week before my first class and park in the Yukon. Then I’ll add 50 pounds of books, tapes and gear to the 30 pounds of clothes I’m wearing tokeep from freezing to death, and hike the 1,700 miles to campus. I’ll get plenty of fresh air on those hikes until I get to the classroom where it’s hot enough to incubate the tuberculosis it sounds like everyone has contracted. I’ll keep my stress level under con trol, even though the man I love is 500 miles away and I haven’t seen him since the birth of Christ. IT DOESN’T BOTHER ME!!! I’m not going to claw the eyeballs from the next per son who tells me to relax. I won’t worry. I won’t think about the accumulated interest on my non deferred school loans or the paper work faux pas that could mean that I have to start paying them this week. I’ll just keep pretending that I’m go ing to get adequate financial aid and that I won't have to move into an appliance box over a steam vent. This, too, shall pass. February will be over soon, and I probably won’t remember any of it. I’ll be in a big, brick building with many windows where a nice lady in a white dress is trying to getme to swallow my Prozac. McAdams is a sophomore news-editorial major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. S \\1 Kl N II I I) State officials need reality check An open letter to thegovemor, the chairman of the Legisla tive Appropriations Commit tee and the NU Board of Regents. Ladies and Gentlemen: Years ago, when I first came to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I was amazed at how little serious commit ment there was to higher education in the state of Nebraska, as compared to my native Kansas. I got the impres sion that UNL’s sole reason for exist ence was to field a football team, for the sole pleasure of getting thrashed in a bowl game every January. Little has occurred in the seven years since to alter my opinion. In fact, I believe that if the Comhuskers didn’t make a losing bowl appearance every year, UNL would no longer exist Your actions in the last year have only aggravated the whole problem. Gov. Ben Nelson talks of cutting 5 percent of the university budget, or nearly $14 million. It is identical to cuts asked of other agencies, such as welfare, job training or corrections. However, since Nebraska has the ninth-Iargest state government in the nation, surely this bloated bureau cracy should be downsized, rather than the university. The mission of a university is dif ferent from those of other agencies. The mission is to educate people, to keep them from becoming wards of the state or locked up in prison, to become productive citizens that pay to support the university and all other state services. State Sen. Scott Moore displays a typically cavalier attitude toward the cuts when he says that a man can afford to “lose an appendix.” This ridiculous statement might be merely irritating, were it not for the fact that this is the man who controls the purse strings in the Legislature. I would ask you, Sen. Moore, to I got the impression that UNL’s sole reason for existence was to field a football team, for the sole pleasure of getting thrashed In a bowl game every January. take another look at Richards Hall. Attend classes in Burnett Hall and flirt with asbestosis, as I do. View the administrative nightmare at registra tion or financial aid time. Try to get on a computer when NU lags behind the national average in terminals per stu dent. Remember that the classics pro gram and the speech communications program were barely saved from elimination last year. Do all that, and then tell me that we can afford to lose an appendix. What other departments have to be elimi nated or gutted below any effective operating level to sate your igno rance? The mission of this university is, I repeat, to educate Nebraskans young and old. 1 contend that the NU system is on its way to a grand failure of that mission. When tuition issbexpensive that many can’t afford it, and when the services received in return are of such poor quality that it amounts to a waste of money, then we might as well shutNU down and tell students to go out of state. Or we could do something about it, right now. Like resolve to get serious about higher education in this state, and make a long-term — 10 years, for example—commitment to fully fund NU. How, you ask? We have to tighten our belts all around, you say? True, but Nebraska is considering a state lottery. Why not do what our neighbor to the south did and buy into Lotto America and earmark half the funds for higher education? And I would add this word to the NU Board of Regents—GROW UP! Your antics of the past few months have brought nothing but disgrace to this university, at a time when it can ill-afford it Stop leaking letters, firing our presi dent and forcing us to thereby throw away another $70,000 to look for a new one. Maybe you haven’t thought of it but the ungracious manner in which our last two presidents have been unseated is going togiveanyone looking at this iob serious pause, and he or she would be entirely justified in not taking it Cease with your juvenile behavior and focus on preserving the university budget. It’sone of the tningsfor which you are elected. If you aren *l up to the job, then maybe the governor and the legislature and the people need to lode at another way of choosing you. Or, better yet, admit your failure and quit. When you finally decide to take higher education seriously, the stu dents, faculty and taxpayers of this state will be grateful. Until then, we're just a second-rate cow college with a second-rate football team that couldn’t win a bowl game to save its life. Kepfleld is > graduate student in history, an alumnus of the UNL College of Law and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. Unldw an tiltu wing Ljy t a) ntu small Uma kids an mitt hig tunn drifts. 11 your kids an g §ing high mt snnwlhingnUh r Hum ivmumg, it's fmn YOU talkt d lit III! HI. Partnership For A Drug-Free America L i ART AUCTION & EXHIBITION 1 OuiqiNAl siqNfd liThoqRAphs, nckiNqs, WATCRCOtoRS AN<J oils by ARTISTS SUCll AS Picasso - DaII CbAqAil MiRO | NeIman Kelly j as well as woRks by many nIw taIents 1 I Fr'kIay, FEbnuARy 19, 1995 7:00 p.M. ExbibWioN & Preview 6:00 p.M. Auction Rock 'N Roll Runia / Banquet Room i 14il» And'P" Sttui* //j J $5.00 per person LOCATION: Donation PresentecI by Perry Berns CaIIery, DaIIas, Texas SpoMoacd by ri* MomtchoN School lot Yowq CMdtcn A NON-ptoIlT Ot<VU«l2A1ION \ WOLFF Tanning Ms f 'SPRING BREAK TAN '93" " Get your "SPRING BREAK" Tan and auR at OCEAN CLUB ONE MONTH "Unlimited Usage"-$25.00 PLUS One Additional Month.FREE k e***3 wage <£**!&** to®'0*® NEW East Lincoln Store **06 Opens March 1st I Centrum Plaza 1111 "O" Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas. -