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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 2, 1993)
—njJLILJU Ivli/rTJKI Beginning midnight Thursday 12:02 a.m. — Alcohol violations, Harper Hall. 3:08 a.m. — Fire, Pound Hall, minor dam age. 3:09 a.m. — Person cut hand on broken glass, Pound Hall. 8:55 a.m. — Wallet stolen, Love Library, $50. 3:48 p.m. — Purse stolen, Veterinary Sci ence Building, $170. 5:10 p.m. — Purse stolen, Food Industry Complex, $500. 6:22 p.m. — Verbal disturbance, Selleck Hall. 6:43 p.m. — Sign hit, remote parking lot across from Bob Devaney Sports Center, $25. Beginning midnight Friday 10:47 a.m. — Wallet stolen, Nebraska Union, no loss. 11:46 a.m.—Hit-and-run accident, parking lot at 10th and Vine streets, $250. 2:43 p.m.—Bike stolen, Westbrook Music Building, $165. 5:09 p.m. — Book stolen, Love Library, $50. 9:27 p.m. — Tail lights broken, parking lot at Haiper-Schramm-Smith, $95. 11:21 p.m. — Accident, parking lot at 13th and Q streets, $1,500. Beginning midnight Saturday 4:34 a.m. — Assault, one male student arrested, Abel Hall. 1:16 p.m. — Car speakers stolen, parking lot at Burr Hall, $140. rrotile Continued from Page 6 But, on the morning of the accident, the only aspect of Thomas’ future that seemed important was keeping her alive. The woman gently grasped Heather’s tom and bloody shirt, guided her to a high-backed dining-room chair and bound her to it to stabilize her neck and back. Although Thomas remembers that her neck and shoulders hurt, she said much of the pain was blunted by her extreme state of shock. Thomas said her aunt called the sheriff and soon after, an ambulance arrived. “My aunt had been talking to me, trying to keep me awake,” she said, “but when the ambulance came, I just passed out.” Thomas said when she regained con sciousness she had one thought: “Am I dead?” A doctor answered, “Not yet, but you will be if you don’t fight it.” Thomas was startled that she’d spoken aloud and began to try to make sense of all the people and lights around her. “I always make jokes to deal with things,” Thomas said, “so I started trying to make people laugh.” The attendants had Thomas lying so that all she could sec was a clock on the wall. “Oh no,” she said. “I’m going to be late for class.” The doctors and nurses smiled uneasily, Thomas said, and someone said, “You won’t be going to class for a while.” When someone exclaimed, “Look at her hands!” Thomas became really alarmed for ' the first time. “Do I still have my hands?” she asked. A nurse answered that not only did she .still have her hands but that not one of her long, carefully French-manicured fingernails had been broken in the accident. Ironic, Thomas said, that her nails would be spared and her neck wouldn’t. Thomas’ neck wasn’t broken initially. In fact, she spent five days in the hospital and then insisted on going back to school. “Hospitals have always scared me,” Thomas said, “so I was fighting to get out.” -44 Then, one morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. — Thomas freshman nursing major -ft - Her friends were her support system, —* Thomas said, and they encouraged her to get back into the swing of things. “A month later I was feeling really queasy and my neck was hurting,” Thomas said. “I was taking more of my pain pills. “Then, one morning, I couldn’t get out of bed.” Thomas had the sensation that her limbs were asleep. They were heavy and tingly, she said. She was rushed to the hospital again and X-rayed by frantic doctors who would tell neither Thomas nor her aunt what was wrong. Thomas was flown to San Antonio, Texas, the site of a special hospital for neck injuries. When her mother arrived in Texas, she insisted on knowing what was wrong with her daughter. “In the accident, I had ripped all the muscles along my fourth and fifth vertebrae,” Thomas said. “The weak muscles had allowed my verteorae 10 move ana nnaiiy split.” Thomas had to have emergency surgery to save her from permanent paralysis. Doctors took bone from her hip and glued, cemented and wired it to her spine. “I had glue in my hair and on my skin,” she laughed. Two months of therapy and her enduring love of dancing helped Thomas rehabilitate from her surgery, she said. “I had to wear a huge brace, but I made it back to school and went to my dance classes,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t dance, but I helped choreograph and supervise.” By that point, Thomas said, she had scars everywhere and thought she was done with hospitals. But a year and two months after her accident, Thomas awoke in her UNL residence hall room to the painfully familiar feeling of tingling numbness in her arms and legs. Thomas hoped that she had just slept wrong and went bravely to class, but she recognized that “weird” signal her body was sending. Thomas was back in the hospital for two weeks of tests, which revealed that the wires, meant to hold her bone graft until it could heal, had come loose. The stray ends were poking into her spinal column. “I had to have my head shaved again,” Heather said, “and have the wire surgically removed.” Finally, 17 months after her car accident, Thomas feels like she’s “100 percent,” and her life is back to normal. “I’m pretty confident that I’m OK now,” she said. “I don’t know what else could go wrong!” p aces, nearly ree time* more mencan Express. ''Ho tnats not a misprint. Vha. ItS Everywhere You Want To Be? j f .eviMU&A mcia»9_ Smoking Continued from Page 1 ing in common areas. “I think the rights of smokers stop where my rights begin,” Kramer said. “We do not have the right to infringe on one another. I have my right to be healthy and have clean air. “I really don’t think it’s a hardship to ask people to go outside to smoke," he said. Brad Prall, Selleck Hall president, said he thought students would get used to restrictions. Prall said he had proposed an amendment to the resolution that would have gradually removed smok ing from public areas. He said, however, that he could understand why RHA took immedi ate action. “I think they felt the need to take action right away when they thought people’s health was in danger,” he said. UPC Continued from Page 1 served under UPC’s new format However, Doyle said, the new en tertainment selection committee will invite minorities and student organi zations such as Association of Stu dents of the University of Nebraska and the Residence Hall Association to an open forum where all interests can be heard. “We think it will actually serve to increase our diversity,” he said. “We’re going to say, ‘OK, give us a wish list, and we’ll see what we can do.’” Linda Kay Morgan, a member of the African-American Special Events committee, said UPC’s move was made too rapidly. She said she thought UPC’s pro gramming would become less diverse as a result of the reconstruction. “I don’t understand what the pur pose of an open forum would be,” Morgan said. Morgan said she felt the change was unnecessary. “I like the structure of UPC the way it is now,” she said. “I think they should have brought the idea of re construction to the committees and had an open forum then, before they started writing up the new structure. Now, it’s too late. It’s done.” Angela Green, the African-Ameri can Special Events committee chair, said she thought UPC’s new structure would work if minorities remained involved in the program selection pro cess. “If everyone has input, then it should work,” Green said. “If UPC becomes an exclusive group, though, there could always be problems.” Green said the minority voice needed to be heard for UPC to be effective under the reorganization. “When you talk about women’s issues, the best person to talk to is a woman,” she said. “When you’re talk ing about black issues, the best person to talk to is a black person.” Doyle said the open forums might be more effective for all UPC-served organizations. However, he said, in volvement from students would be needed to make the selection process work. “Obviously, there’s no way 11 people can grasp what a whole cam pus wants,” he said. “We’ll need stu dents to show up and tell us what they want” Doyle said a delegation from UPC went to Nashville,Tenn., in February toa National Association for Campus Activities convention, where they talked with about 50 other schools about UPC’s restructuring. “They all said, ‘Yeah, that’s the way to go,”’ Doyle said. “We’re re ally the trendsetters for campus ac tivities here at UNL. A lot of univer sities around the nation have modeled their organizations after ours.” Reduce Continued from Page 1 mitlec which writes ihe slate bud get—said he expected various groups would compete fiercely for more fund ing as a result of the forecast. One of those groups, he said, would beUNL. Moore said he thought the Univer sity of Nebraska would try to retrieve about $14 million in cuts already rec ommended by the Appropriations Committee. But, he said, expectations by UNL administrators and faculty members shouldn’t get too high. "There still will have to be budget cuts. There’s no way around that,’’ he said. “It’s just that the impact won’t be as severe as we’d first expected.” John Goebel, vice chancellor for business and finance at UNL, said that while the reduction is positive, he needs more information before be coming optimistic about UNL’s chances of recovering some of the money targeted for cuts. "Right now, it would be premature to make any assumptions that this will help us out very much,” Goebel said. “We simply need to study it more and gain more information about our op tions.” Goebel said the new forecast did not surprise him. ‘‘In the normal course of events, people do the best they can with the information they have/’ he said. ‘‘You never really know what to anticipate. ‘‘Especially when it comes to money.”