—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.
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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.”
