<4 SPORTS Fifth-place Finish The 11 th-ranked Husker wrestling team won four of s matches at the National Dual Championships in Lincoln. Page 5 Monday 53/21 Today, partly cloudy with a chance of rain in the evening. January 24, 1994 University of Nebraska-Lincoln Vol. 93 No. 86 Fraternity found violating rules on alcohol By Jeff Zeleny Senior Editor Sigma Nu Fraternity faces possible sanc tions by the Greek Judicial Board in connection with a party involving alco hol and female strippers last Friday. This was the second City Campus fraterni ty house in two weeks where university offi cials found alcohol. No arrests were made after University of Nebraska-Lincoln police broke up the Sigma Nu party. James Griesen, UNL vice chancellor for student affairs, received an anonymous tip about the party and notified police. Officials report second greek group in two weeks Griesen broke up a party on Jan. 13 in another City Campus fraternity. He did not disclose the name of that fraternity because of the Student Code of Conduct confidentiality clause. However, sources told the Daily Ne braskan the Kappa Sigma house was involved in the Jan. 13 incident. Kappa Sigma officers would not confirm or deny reports. The Sigma Nu incident was made public because university police were called to the party, Griesen said. UNL Police Sgt. Bill Manning said offic ers arrived at the Sigma Nu house Friday at 2:06 a.m. and observed female strippers through a basement window, Manning said. Sigma Nu executive officers told police there was a small amount of beer in the basement — no more than a few six-packs. The party was dispersed without incident, Manning said, and no citations were issued because police did not personally observe any alcohol consumption, and there was no indi cation of a law violation. “There was no evidence of minors con suming there,” Manning said. Police did not enter the Sigma Nu house. Fraternities and sororities are owned by private corporations and are not university property. Police cannot enter the houses with out permission, Manning said. However, five university officials can en ter the houses at any time without permission. They include: Griesen; Assistant Vice Chan cellors for Student Affairs Peg Blake and Doug Zatechka; Linda Schwartzkopf, student judicial affairs director; and Jayne Wade Anderson, director of greek affairs. University officials received anonymous tips about both fraternity parties, Griesdn said, which may indicate the university com See FRATERNITY on 3 Washington grading officials: Decimal system works for us By Angie Brunkow Senior Reporter_ See related story on page 3. Registration officials at universities using a decimal grading system said they had heard no complaints. Virjean Edwards, assistant registrar for records at the University of Washington in Seattle, said the university’s 40-point grading system gave professors a lot of flexibility when assigning grades. Under the system, adopted about 20 years ago, professors assign students a numerical grade between 4.0 and 0.7, she said. Students earning a traditional A can earn grade points between 3.4 and 4.0. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Aca demic Senate will consider a proposal to change UNL’s letter-grade system to a decimal system at its February meeting. Earl Hawkey, director of UNL’s Office of Registration and Records, said only about 1 percent of U.S. universities used the decimal system. Although Hawkey said he didn’t know why so few schools used the decimal system, he guessed that few changed to it because they were used to the system they had. “A lot of it is simply tradition,” he said. Clarice Wolfstone, superintendent of the grade information office at the University of Washington, said faculty pressure led her uni versity to make the change from the A-B-C-D F system used before the mid-1970s. “They (faculty) felt there wasn’t enough range,” she said. Faculty pressure also prompted the change to a decimal system at Eastern Washington University at Cheney. Debbie Fockler, program manager for the registrar, said the decimal system gave profes sors more leeway in grading the university’s 8,000 students. Edwards said professors needed the 40 pos sible grading options to accurately evaluate their students. “I think professorsareundera lot of pressure from students,” she said. Instead of giving a student a C grade and 2.0 points, a professor can accurately show wheth er a student got a high or low C and assign grade points accordingly, she said. Wolfstonc said many students were leery of the change before it occurred, fearing it would be impossible to earn a 4.0. Although exact figures were unavailable, Edwards said it would be rare for one of the University of Washington’s 32,000 students to have a 4.0 cumulative GPA. Hawkey said UNL had 399 students with a cumulative 4.0 GPA — 61 seniors, 69 juniors, See GRADES on 3 Arab students recollect war By Kara G. Morrison S0nbr R9Qort9f_ Last week’s three-year anniversary of the Persian Gulf War brought memories of another struggle to UNL students of Arab descent. Amin Ismail came home from his classes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and turned on the news on Jan. 16,1991. “I cried when I saw it. It was really hard for me to observe what was going on.... We were all hoping for a more peaceful solution," Ismail, a senior finance major, said. Ismail’s entire family was living in Jerusa lem. He spent the night on the telephone with family members who, although safe, feared the possibility of an all-out war in the region. Tarek Tarawneh, who is working on ms doctorate in civil engineering at UNL, was living in Amman, Jordan, when the war broke out. “It was 3 o’clock over there. I woke up and my mom was crying,” Tarawneh said. “She said, ‘They’re bombing.’ I looked out and all the lights in the neighborhood were on. “Amman didn’t go to sleep that night,” he said. “In fact, Amman didn’t go to sleep until after the war.” Nabil Zeidan spent most of Jan. 16 calling his family members in the West Bank. Zeidan, a junior business administration major at UNL, was a student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha when the war started. “I was sleeping,” Zeidan said. “Someone called me and told me to turn on the TV.... They were talking about the airstrikes. “I had to call my family, who lives in the West Bank. They told me nothing was going on. They hadn’t heard yet that the war had started.” School didn’t help matters. “The first couple days of the war, I didn’t go to school because I was worried about home... and because I thought there would be some American students who wouldn’t like the idea of an Arab or Palestinian walking around in the student union,” Zeidan said. When Zeidan finally left his television screen and telephone and went back to his classes, he heard, “F—ing Palestinian, go back home.” Ismail, who was bom in Chicago, said he and other students of Arab descent endured their own battle at UNL. “We had a lot of problems as far as harass ment. People starting fights with us when were were out, (shouting) racial slurs...” he said. And while those of Arab descent had to be on their guard in the United States, the U.S. Em bassy was being closely protected by the Jorda nian government, Tarawneh said. “I came to the States a year after the war and still felt the hatred Americans had for Arabs. I thought ‘What did I do? I haven’t done any thing.’” In downtown Lincoln, three years after the war, Tarawneh still hears phrases like “sand nigger" directed at him. Zeidan, Tarawneh and Ismail all say they strongly believe U.S. involvement was yet another unjustified interference in the region by a superpower, and that the war was about oil, not human rights. They sympathized with those who worried about American troops and wor See STUDENTS on 3 "EBR^ R,GHt ^ VC* Forrn*r,v Nebraska b' Uie Damon Lee/DN Cal Thomas, a nationally syndicated columnist, addresses a crowd at the 19th annual Walk for Life Saturday at the Nebraska Capitol. The walk, sponsored by Nebraska Right to Life, involved an estimated 5,000 anti abortion activists. Columnist leads Walk tor Lite Thomas urges crowd not to give up faith By Matthew Waite Smtbr Reporter___ See related story on page 2. The anti-abortion movement has been pronounced dead by politicians and the national media, according to a speaker at Saturday’s 19th annual Walk for Life. “It's conventional wisdom, and as usual, it's exactly wrong, said Cal Thomas, a nationally syndicated conservative colum nist. Thomas kicked ofT the march, sponsored by Nebraska Right to Life, at the steps of the Nebraska Capitol. The march ended at the Nebraska Union. He said abortion-rights advocates were making choices for pregnant women. “Women are being herded like cattle into making predetermined decisions by the left in this country,” he said. Americans view government as God, See RALLY on 2