University of Nebraska
October 1 5, 1 993
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Vol. 93 No. 39
Travis Haying/DN
Noah Walsh gets intstructions on how to use his extra hand Thursday night at the Asylum Haunted House.
Center scares up funds for teens
By Matthew Waite
Staff Reporter
If the media thought at-risk teens were
scary, wait until they see them now.
This month, Lighthouse, a meeting
place and gathering center for at-risk 14- to
18-year-olds in the Lincoln area, is staging
The Asylum — a haunted house ami fund
raiser, next to Spaghetti Works, 228 N. 12th
St.
Lighthouse got involved in the project as
a matter of thinking about the future, Pete
Allman, Lighthouse director, said. ,
“We just need more money,” Allman
said. “We have about six months of operat
ing income left. Now is the time to start
planning for six months down the road.”
Allman said the teens who attended the
center were at risk of dropping out of school,
pregnancy,drug and alcohol addiction, run
ning away from home, or physical and sex
ual abuse.
The center, which is privately funded,
receives donations from special events, cor
porate donations and other fund-raisers, he
said. But those events, Allman said, just
don’t make enough money for Lighthouse.
“We need a big fund-raiser like this,”
Allman said, adding that an event like the
haunted house could bring in as much as
will help us,” he said,
le had planned an entirely
different fund-raiser until a friend offered
him the space and came up with the idea of
a haunted house.
But Allman said he had never worked on
a haunted house before ami he didn’t know
where to start.
“Not knowing a thing about it, I said we’d
do it,” Allman said.
$20,000.
“Any amount
Allman said h
Allman obtained the space from the own
er of Spaghetti Works and then went out to
find volunteers to help design the inside of
the haunted house.
Bryan Learning Center, an alternative
high schbol, built the interior, and Allman
had to contract out the electrical work.
“We had to pass fire codes, electrical
codes and building codes,” Allman said.
The center also rounded up some Univer
sity of Nebraska-Lincoln organizations to
help out.
Three of the four Lincoln high school
drama departments and the UNL Masquers
will perform inside the house.
“It’s kids helping kids,” Allman said.
“We have 21 volunteers a night for 16
nights.”
Allman then recruited the help of the
See HAUNTED on 3
Discovered
ammunition
maybe linked
to Harms case
By Steve Smith
Senior Reporter
incoln Fire Department divers pulled 20
rounds of live ammunition from Pawnee
Lake Tuesday that investigators think
may be linked to the Candice Harms murder
Lancaster County Sheriff Department Capt.
Bill Coleman said Thursday that divers discov
ered the ammunition during an almost five
hour searchof the lake, located eight miles west
of Lincoln.
Tuesday’s search, the third since Harms’
body was found in December 1992, was con
ducted as a final inspection before Bjorklund’s
trial.
case
“(Bjorklund’s) getting ready to go to court,
so we felt one tast took would be merited,”
Coleman said. “It turned out for the best that we
did.”
Divers searched the lake twice after Harms’
body was found in December 1992 in a shallow
grave south of Lincoln. Those searches of the
lake produced a .3 8-caliber revolver and a .3 80
caliber semiautomatic handgun.
Coleman said the search team used a new
magnetrometer in the latest search. The
magnetrometer, essentially an underwater met
al detector, was acquired by the fire department
through funds provided by the Lincoln Police
Department, the sheriffs office and the fire
department, Coleman said.
The divers recovered ammunition that could
have been used in the weapons found during the
earlier searches, Coleman said.
However, Coleman said, sheriffs investiga
tors are waiting for laboratory results before
verifying if the discovery is related to the
. Harms case.
The tests will take about a week, he said.
“I’m sure there is more (evidence),” Coleman
said. “I’m sure we could find something. ”
Roger Bjorklund, 31, and Scott Barney, 24,
both face first-degree murder charges in Harms’
murder.
On Feb. 4, Lancaster County Attorney Gary
Lacey said state prosecutors would seek the
death penalty for Bjorklund. Prosecutors decid
ed not to seek capital punishment for Barney in
exchange for his testimony against Bjorklund.
Jury selection for Bjorklund’s trial begins
Monday in Cheyenne County. Bjorklund’s trial
is scheduled to start Oct. 25 in Lincoln.
UNL to study financial aid application errors
By Dionne Searcey
Senior Reporter
Students receiving a letter this
week from the financial aid of
fice shouldn’t pass it off as junk
mail, a UNL official said.
John Beacon, director of Scholar
ships and Financial Aid, said 280
students had been selected to help the
University ofNebraska-Lincoln com
plete a U.S. Department of Education
study.
Tile study includes a questionnaire
students must complete before they
receive their second-semester finan
cial aid.
UNL is one of 100 schools selected
last spring to participate in the Educa
tion Department’s Institutional Qual
ity Assurance program, Beacon said.
The program, which will last sev
eral vears, is a self-study, he said.
“ft gives the financial aid office an
opportunity to assess its services to
students, its management and to focus
on any areas that need some work,” he
said. During the first year of the study,
Beacon said, UNL officials will ex
amine student aid applications and
determine where the greatest number
of errors occur.
Students who apply for aid often
make mistakes on the lengthy appli
cation that asks for such information
as annual income or number ofhouse
hold members, he said.
Mistakes include incorrectly re
porting tax information and writing
names in the wrong spaces, Beacon
said.
“There’s an amazing number of
people who don’t write their right
social security number,” he said.
More than half of UNL students
who apply for aid make mistakes,
Beacon said.
Small mistakes in answering such
questions can make a world of differ
ence in determining amounts of aid
students receive, Beacon said.
The study will help el iminate ques
tionnaire mistakes by asking students
to rehash some of die answers they
gave on their financial aid verifica
tion form.
“This is not a difficult question
naire,N Beacon said. “It’s pretty
s t-forward.”
i semester UNL students were
asked to verify all their answers on
financial aid forms, he said. Financial
aid officials then were required to
muddle through a load of paperwork
to compare the information, Beacon
said.
Many students had to wait for the
financial aid process to be completed,
he said. The delay, along with stu
dents* mistakes filling out forms,
caused some students to wait until
after school started to receive finan
cial aid. Determining the areas of
See FINANCE on 3
n.. ii^rL Uarni*
tsy MliK namiS
Staff Report*
The NU Board of Regents is
expected to approve at Friday’s
meeting a list of consultants to
look into the proposal for a separate
engineering college at UNO, officials
said.
If approved, the four independent
consultants would try to determine
Nebraska’s need for engineering edu
cation and decide if those needs are
being met by the current system, ac
Nil REGENTS
cording to t press release from the
University or Nebraska president’s
office.
Currently, the
engineering col
lege is adminis
tered through the
University of Ne
braska-Lincoln.
UNO and Omaha
businesses want a
separate college on
the Omaha cam
pus.
The consultants would make rec
ommendations on how the university -
could improve engineering education
in the state, including whether or not
an independent college is needed at
the University ofNebraska at Omaha.
J.B. Milliken, corporation secre
tary for the board, said he did not
know when the consultants would
begin work, but “we hope to have this
wrapped up by the end of the year.’*,.
Milliken said hiring the consult
ants would cost between $ 15,000 and
$20,000. The University ofNebraska
Foundation would pay the bill, he said
“We haven’t negotiated the fine
points of this yet,” Milliken said.
The recommended consultants are:
James Halligan, president of New
Mexico State University; Donald
Langenberg, chancellor of the Uni
versity of Maryland system; Charles
James, dean of the College of Engi
neering and Applied Science at the
Uni versityofWiscons in-Milwaukee;
and John Christian, vice president of
Stone and Webster Engineering Cor
poration.
Also at Friday’s meeting, regents
will consider the proposal to remove
a parking lot north of the Nebraska
Union and replace it with North Plaza
Park, a landscaped area with shrubs,
trees, walkways and lights.
The project would cost about
$ 198,000 and the money would come
from general operating and private
funds, according to Chancellor Gra
ham Spanier’s report to the board.
UNL Student Regent Keith Bencs
See REGENTS on 3
