Improved forecast is quick hx, senator says
By Chuck Green
Senior Reporter
Although Nebraska’s projected
$65 million budget gap was
cut almost in half last Friday,
one legislator doesn *t anticipate many
of the state’s economic problems be
ing solved.
And at least one University of Ne
braska-Lincoln administrator isn't
getting his hopes up, either.
State Sen. Scott Moore of Seward
said last Friday’s announcement by
the state Economic Forecasting Advi
sory Board was encouraging. But, he
said, optimism should be restrained
— at least for now.
The board's new forecast called
for less than 5 percent annual eco
nomic growth for the state’s budget in
the next 28 months, reducing by $33
million the projected gap between
anticipated state spending and state
tax revenue.
Moore said the improved forecast
was based on effects of the passage of
LB829 in 1991 — which was later
found to be unconstitutional — and
projected effects of LB 1, a personal
property tax that was enacted last fall
during a special legislative session.
The forecast could be misleading
to some, Moore said, because no new
— 44-—;:
There still will have to be budget cuts. There’s no
way around that.
—Moore
State Senator
/
-.-— -
economic growth had been gener
ated, just “newly discovered.”
“We’ve got to make some perma
nent corrections to solve these prob
lems,” he said. “Our spending in
creases at a rate that exceeds our
income, and there are no easy ways to
solve that predicament.”
Moore, who is chairman of the
Legislature’s Appropriations Com
See REDUCE on 6
Stad McKee/DN
Heather Thomas was the victim of a car accident her senior year of high school that left her neck broken.
Close call
Near death experience motivates student to pursue goals
By Katherine Gordon
star flower
Heather Thomas stood quietly
bleeding on the carpet in her
aunt’s bedroom in Minot, N.D.
on the morning of Oct. 1,1991 after
walking a mile and a half from the remote
road where she’d just rolled her car.
Her aunt, who luckily had called in
sick to work that morning, awoke and
asked her disheveled niece what was
wrong.
Eighteen-year-old Thomas, with two
cracked ribs, a bruised heart, two major
concussions, a cracked breastbone and
shards of broken glass in her eye, an
swered, ‘‘I think rve been in an accident.
I’m going to bed.”
Thomas, now 19 and a freshman
nursing major at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, had set out on her
usual route to her high school that October
morning but was stopped by the accident
that would lead the dance enthusiast to
near death, then near paralysis.
The accident that almost took away her
ability to dance has encouraged Thomas
to minor in fine arts at UNL, focusing on
dancing and singing.
The nurses who kept her spirits up and
kept her busy while she was rehabilitating
in the hospital have encouraged her
nursing ambitions.
See PROFILE on 6
UPC president
says changes
boost diversity
By Steve Smith
Santor Editor
UNL will sport a University Program
Council “on the cutting edge” of cam
pus activity groups next year, the presi
dent of the council said.
Reorganization of UPC to an event-by-event
planning committee will increase the group’s
effectiveness and diversity, Gary Doyle said,
and it could help in the process of bringing big
time acts to UNL.
Doyle said next semester the council would
implement the fusion of almost 20 separate
subcommittees into an 11-person “super-com
mittee,” members of which were chosen last
week.
Doyle said the sky was the limit when con
sidering what programs could come to campus.
“It’s a totally new way of thinking,” Doyle
said. “We want to show that UNL is serious
about showing concerts with big-lime acts.”
Doyle listed such acts as Elton John, Guns
‘N’ Roses and The Black Crowes as targets for
future UPC efforts. The musical group Sawyer.
Brown already has agreed to play at UNL, he
UPC currently has about 20 specialized
subcommittees that serve the 25 special-inter
est groups UPC works with, Doyle said.
‘The idea was that the committees would
work well together,” he said. “But the work was
very task-specific. People were getting bored
with the similarity of the jobs.”
The result, Doyle said, was loss of member
ship in the subcommittees. Fourteen subcom
mittee chairs resigned in the last year.
Something needed to be done, Doyle said.
“Either something was wrong with me or
with the structure of UPC as a whole,” he said.
“In the formal that we have it in now, being
on or running a committee is a year-round
commitment. A lot of students can’t do that,” he
said. “With this consolidation, we hope to get
more students involved.”
With the reorganization, UPC’s separate
committees have been eliminated. Program
selections would be made by event directors
and executives during meetings where all pos
sible performers would be presented and evalu
ated by the committee.
Doyle said when the proposal was first pul in
front of the current UPC members, some minor
ity groups feared their interests would not be
UPC on 6
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Housing office to implement ban, official says
By Mindy Loiter
8mtr Rtpornr
Members of the Residence
Hall Association weren’t
just blowing smoke when
' they introduced a resolution that
would ban smoking in residence hall
food service areas.
RHA members are waiting for the
Officeof University Housing to acton
the resolution. They shouldn’ thave to
wait long, said one University of Ne
braska-Lincoln official.
RHA resolution would prohibit smoking in food service areas
Doug Zatcchka, director of the
Office of University Housing, said his
department would be working with
RHA to implement the smoking ban.
He said he hoped to have the ban in
effect by the 1994-95 academic year.
“I have supported RHA in the reso
lution and tried to provide advice,”
Zatcchka said.
A smoker himself, Zatcchka said
he supported the ban in residence hall
cafeterias because it would protect
the rights of non-smokers in the caf
eterias.
Zatechka said the current campus
smoking policy restricts smoking to
smoking lounges and private offices
with ventilators.
In the residence halls, students may
smoke in lounges, in their rooms and
in smoking sections of the cafeteria,
he said.
Heath Kramer, the RHA member
with a resolution passed by the Asso
ciauon oi atuoenis oi uie university
of Nebraska that would ban smoking
in all UNL buildings.
Kramer said the RHA resolution
was necessary because AS UN’s reso
lution, which still needs approval from
the NU Board of Regents, would not
cover residence halls.
Both resolutions were based on
reports released by the Environmen
tal Protection Agency that described
the health hazards of secondhand
smoke.
“In Harper-Schramm-Smith, the
smoking area is wide open and smoke
travels to the non-smoking areas,”
Kramer said.
“It is an infringement on the non
smokers’ rights to have to walk
through smoking areas,” Kramer said.
He said the resolution would allow
students to continue to smoke in their
rooms, but would further restrict smok
See SMOKING on 6