October 28, 1993
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Vol. 93 No. 48
Thursday
$0/25
Blustery and turning
cold today. Friday,
continued cold,
highs in the 30‘s
Still Perfect
The Nebraska
volleyball team
defeated Kansas State
for the 47th time in 47
tries Wednesday night.
Page 7
Sleepout s value to homeless in question
By Paula Lavigne
Staff Reporter
Some Lincoln residents will sleep
out Friday to raise money for
the city’s estimated 3,000 home
less, but critics of the event would
ratherpeople with homes stayed there.
The Great Plains Winter Sleepout,
which will start Friday at 6 p.m. and
end Saturday at 7 a.m. at Centennial
Mall, is sponsored by the Lincoln/
Lancaster County Homeless Coali
tion.
Steve Janovec, executive director
of the Peoples City Mission and chair
man of the sleepout’s steering com
mittee, said the event offered “a very,
very, small taste of what it’s like
being homeless.”
But Rev. Andy Hird of All Souls
Non-Denominational Church and
Street Missionary said he thought the
sleepout would only distort the
homelessness problem.
“The sleepout doesn’t really talk
about the severity and dangers of
homelessness and how we can eradi
cate it,” Hird said. “It seems more like
a fun event or party.”
Because of this, Hird, along with
members of Humanity Plus, a newly
formed organization striving to “fight
injustice against humanity,” plan to
protest the sleepout.
Hird, founder of Humanity Plus,
said his organization opposed the
event because it exploited homeless
people by falsely portraying the prob
lem.
The group’s protest will be a silent
demonstration from 6 p.m. to mid
night Friday at 15th and N streets.
Hird said he expected about 50 people
to attend.
“We’re going to hold up signs,”
Hird said. “We’re doing itbecause we
felt it was necessary to really educate
people about the homeless.”
But Janovec said he thought the
sleepout would help, not harm, the
homeless.
“Obviously, I disagree that it ex
ploits homelessness,” he said.
Janovec said although some of the
events would be enjoyable, the
sleepout’s primary purpose was to
educate the public and to raise sup
port.
“The goal of this is not to have fun
or be entertained,” he said. “But rais
ing funds for the homeless doesn’t
have to mean sour faces.”
Janovec said participants would be
role-playing and acting out situations
that contributed to homelessness. Or
ganizers also have planned musical
performances, speakers from home
less organizations and speeches by
people who are homeless.
Janovec said the program could
still be enjoyable for the expected
1,000 participants while providing a
See SLEEPOUT on 2
Old building
once hosted
musical ghost,
professor says
Editor's Note: This story is part of a Hallow
een week series about Lincoln's ghost sto
ries.
By Jeffrey Robb
Staff Reporter _
Thirty years ago, Nebraska Wesleyan Uni
versity’s Academic Dean Sam Dahl was
the first to hear that his secretary, Coleen
Buterbaugh, had seen a ghost.
He never discounted the story. Nor do many
people on the Wesleyan cam
pus, Mary Smith, a NWU
English professor, said. The
school seems to have accept
ed that the campus may have
a ghost, Smith said.
Smith is one of the hand
ful of current faculty mem
bers who was around on Oct.
3, 1963. She has become
Wesleyan’s resident ghost
story teller.
Smith said one story in particular—the one
about Clara Mills — has carved a niche in
Nebraska Wesleyan’s campus tradition. The
ghost is so popular she even has a room on
campus named after her.
Smith recounts the following story about
mius.
The story began in 1912, when Mills came
to work in Wesleyan’s music department. Mills’
office was in the C.C. White Building.
Smith said the C.C. White Building fit the
image of a haunted house. The construction
passed through many stages, she said, and
architectural stylesdid not match. This gave the
building a disjointed sense.
She said construction glitches led to howling
sounds rushing down the halls when an east
wind blew, further adding to its mystique.
The building stayed open all night, Smith
said, because it was used primarily by music
students who had no other time to practice.
A number of strange occurrences took place
in the building, but no one paid much attention
to them until April 1940.
One spring morning, Mills was found in her
office, dead of an apparent heart attack. The
death made the already strange building even
more frightening.
But for more than 20 years, nothing unusual
happened in the C.C. White Building — until
Oct. 3, 1963.
According to Alan Boye’s book “A Guide to
the Ghosts of Lincoln,’* that was the day Coleen
Buterbaugh opened an office door and felt a
deathly stillness and a strange presence.
Boye wrote that Buterbaugh turned and saw
a ghostly apparition to her nght. Through the
window, instead of the buildings that should
have been visible, Buterbaugh saw a scene
from the past.
She ran from the room to tell her boss what
happened.
Smith'said within hours everybody on cam
pus had heard the story. By noon, residence hall
counselors were cal led to Dahl ’ s office and told
to keep the story quiet.
The story may have seemed preposterous at
first, Smith said, but Dahl believed it. Some
time later, Buterbaugh was shown a Wesleyan
yearbook and identified Clara Mills as the
See WESLEYAN on 6
Gerik Parmete/DN
Winding up
UNL heptathlete Michelle Shoemaker prepares to throw a shot put at Weir Track on Wednesday afternoon.
Trial video details Harms’ grave site
By Steve Smith
Senior Reporter
Prosecutors presented image after grisly
image Wednesday as they attempted to
build a foundation of evidence to con
vict Roger Bjorklund in the 1992 slaying of a
University of Nebraska-Lincoln student.
Roger
BJorkkmd
uepuiy county
Attorney John
Colbom showed ju
rors photographs
and a videotape re
cording of Candice
Harms’ remains,
(which were found
in a shallow grave
south of Lincoln,
k The 31-year-old
Bjorklund faces
first-degree murder charges in the September
1992 slaying of UNL freshman Harms, 18, of
Lincoln.
As Colbom played the videotape, which
detailed the area around the grave site and
Harms’ remains, at least six observers were
compelled to leave the courtroom.
Bjorklund, who was dressed in a black shirt,
blue jeans and white tennis shoes, scribbled on
a notepad and showed little interest while jurors
watched the tape.
Colbom entered into evidence the videotape
as well as several photos from Dec. 6, when
authorities searched the shallow grave near
134th Street and Yankee Hill Road.
Lancaster County District Judge Donald
Endacott allowed the tape and the pictures into
evidence despite several objections from
Bjorklund’s attorney, Chief Deputy Public
Defender Scott Helvie.
Helvie said several of the photographs were
irrelevant to the case. He said the amount of
time the court would have to devote to the
numerous pictures also would deprive Bjorklund
of due process.
Endacott ruled Tuesday prosecutors could
use only 15 of 50 photographs they had submit
ted. The photographs included those taken at
Harms’ autopsy and when her body was recov
ered.~7~
Scott Barney, the other man charged in
Harms’ murder, led police to a shallow grave
containing Harms’ body on Dec. 6. Barney
agreed to work with authorities so that the death
penalty would not be sought against him.
Prosecutors have said they would seek the
death penalty against Bjorklund if he was con
victed.
See TRIAL on 6
News of UNL assault travels to Malaysia
By Alan Phelps
Senior Reporter
News about the on-campus assault of a
Malaysian student apparently is giving
UNL a bad name in his home country.
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs James
Griesen said several Malaysian students had
told him of the incident’s news coverage in
Malaysia.
“The news accounts did not make UNL look
good," Griesen said.
Especially in the wake of widely-reported
tourist shootings in Florida, Griesen said, re
ports of the assault could lead Malaysians to
believe the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is
a violent place.
“It makes people nervous,” he said.
Boon-Chung Ong, a UNL student from
Malaysia, was assaulted Oct. 17 in Broyhill
Plaza. Police are continuing their investigation
into the incident. On Tuesday, a male juvenile
was arrested in Omaha for third-degree assault.
Cheow Teong Oh, president of the Malay
sian Student Association, said he had heard
from relatives back home that almost every
newspaper in Malaysia carried a story about the
assault.
He said Malaysians took the news very
seriously.
“They worry and do not feel safe about their
children here,” he said.
Oh said most of the articles probably origi
nated from Associated Press reports. Translat
ing the story into the several languages spoken
in Malaysia — such as Chinese ana Malay —
may have distorted the news, he said, making
the situation seem worse.
Many Malaysians, Oh said, thought the as
sault was racially motivated because witnesses
said the perpetrators were black men. Oh said
he recently was contacted by a Malaysian re
porter asking questions about the assault.
“I tried to explain to him this is not racism,”
Oh said.
Oh said Malaysian students planned to send
letters and local newspaper articles about the
assault to Malaysian colleges and media to try
to set the record straight.
‘‘We are trying to do our best to convince
everybody this is a safe place,” he said.
Griesen also said UNL was a safe place to go
to school. However, he said, saying someplace
is good and safe doesn’t grab headlines as much
as assaults do.
Griesen said he and International Affairs
officials would send information Jo Malaysian
colleges that have sent students to Nebraska.
‘‘We want to make sure the whole story is
out,” Griesen said. “It was an unfortunate act of
random violence,”