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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 10, 1994)
Opinion Nebraskan Thursday, February 10,1994 Editorial Board University of Nebraska-Lincoln Jeremy Fitzpatrick Rainbow Rowell. Adeana Left in. . . . Todd Cooper..... Jeff Zeleny Sarah Duey. Willi an Lauer.... . ... Editor.472-1766 Opinion Page Editor Managing Editor Sports Editor Associate News Editor Arts & Entertainment Editor Senior Photographer Unwise cuts NCAA shouldn't trim quality programs In an effort to cut expenses, the NCAA has taken a step that will reduce quality in college athletics. Proposal 158, passed at the NCAA convention in January, will probably eliminate men’s gymnastics as a sanctioned NCAA sport after next season. That means men’s gymnastics will no longer have a national championship meet. The proposal requires that a sport must have at least 40 univer sities to remain sanctioned by the NCAA. Only 36 schools have men’s programs. Nebraska, which has won seven of the last 14 national champi onships, will certainly be disadvantaged by the new policy. But so will all of the college sports. Gymnastics is a quality sport that should be recognized. Francis Allen, the Nebraska men’s coach, said the passage of Proposal 158 showed the problems with gender equity in athletics and dwindling resources. “It all goes back to gender equity,” Allen said. “Actually, it’s not really even gender equity — it’s money.” In tight financial times for colleges, the NCAA is right to trim back unnecessary expenses in athletics. But eliminating men’s gymnastics as a sanctioned sport is not a wise cost-cutting move. There is room for cuts in athletics. But making them to smaller sports of high quality is not the answer. The NCAA should look harder next time instead of cutting good programs. Promises, promises Students should choose leaders carefully A SUN elections arc coming up. The air is thick with “if elected ...” promises and campaign goals. Two parties have announced their candidacy: VISION, headed by Andrew Loudon, and RESUME, headed by J.B. Howell. Although the powers of the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska are limited, it is students’ primary voice in campus issues. ASUN influences policies that directly affect students, and therefore it should reflect student opinion. It’s important that students take part in the upcoming election. Greater participation will let candidates know University of Ncbraska-Lincoln students care about how they are represented. After the election, they can expect voters to monitor the perfor mance of those elected. ASUN elections are March 9. Until then, both parties will have the opportunity to outline their plans for the student body. When hearing these plans, student voters must demand that candidates be honest and specific. VISION hopes to keep down student fees and increase campuswide participation in committees. RESUME would like to reform UNL’s alcohol policy and expand evening class scheduling. Promises are easy to make, and any candidate will be tempted to attack the most troubling issues. But simply promising to solve a problem like parking or budget cuts isn’t enough to do so. For students to take them seriously, candidates must offer detailed and realistic plans. The race should not be based on who has the best promises, but on who can best serve UNL students. l miuui \i I’m i< \ Staff editorial* represent the official policy of the Spring 1994 Daily Nebraakan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Editorials do not necessarily reflect the views of the university, its employees, the students or the NU Board of Regents. Editorial columns represent the opinion of the author. The regents publish the Daily Nebraskan. They establish the UNL Publications Board to supervise the daily production of the paper According to policy set by the regents, responsibility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its students. I I I I I It l'( >1 K \ The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor from all readers and interested others. Letters will be selected for publication on the basis of clarity, originality, timeliness and space available. The Daily Nebraskan retains the right to edit or reject all material submitted. Readers also are welcome to submit material as guest opinions. The editor decides whether material should run as a guest opinion. Letters and guest opinions sent to the newspaper become the property of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be returned. Anonymous submissions will not be published. Letters should included the author’s name, year in school, major and group affiliation, if any. Requests to withhold names will not be granted. Submit material to the Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448. 1.11 11 un in I ill Kdmou ‘Window problem’ I would like to comment on the Jeffrey Knoll incident and the folly of our times. I am sad that Knoll fell out of the window and was injured. If it were in my power, I'd enact legislation that would give a $ 100 fine to anyone who has a window without a screen or removes a screen out of a window. I see this as the most practical solution to the problem of students falling out of windows. The current trend is to approach the window problem from the most distant angle by outlawing hazing. Hazing is a natural human behavior. Boot camp is the military form of hazing. Manhood rites in primitive societies are a form of hazing. Pros pecting for a motorcycle club is a form of hazing. Admitting in front of a group that you are alcoholic is a form of hazing. Confessing your sins before an entire church is a form of hazing. Hazing is good, clean fun if done right. It brings fond memories and sorts out people who do not belong in a group. If we prohibit hazing, it does not stop, but will go on unregulated and may be too severe. I think we should regulate hazing, setting limits and requiring full disclosure of to expect from each fraternity. Even Joe Stalin couldn’t make 30,000 students quit drinking. We students pay top dollar for the right to live in the residence halls, and if you were totalitarian enough todrive alco hol from the halls and greek houses, you would have no one willing to pay to live there. If you were totalitarian enough to stop drinking at tailgate parties and ball games, you wouldn’t be able to sell tickets to the games. Jeffrey Knoll and the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity have suffered for the screenless window problem. I see no benefit to clamping down on 30,000 other students that drink and haze responsibly in order to save the bother of putting up a window screen. Mark McGoveran sophomore engineering DN coverage In the 5 1/2 years I have been a student and staff member at the Uni versity of Nebraska-Lincoln, I have never written a negative letter about the Daily Nebraskan. But I cannot restrain myself from doing so today. During the last several years, I have seen DN front-page articles on impor tant issues such as sun tanning, swim ming in and soaping Broyhill Foun tain, greek social rituals, toilet-pa pered campus trees and kissing con tests for Cancun vacations. Monday evening Dr. Don Aitken, president of the Solar Energy Society and senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, addressed a crowd of 100 people. Included were numerous professors, Nebraska Pub lic Power District Board members, state environmental organization lead ers and others. Aitken is among the world’s most prominent experts on both the technical and policy aspects of energy consumption, a $600 mil lion industry in the United States alone. The environment aside, Ncbras ka’seconomyhasbillionsofdollarsat stake with more than 70 percent of energy dollars leaving the state. Crit ical legislation in the Legislature aimed at alleviating this and creating thou sands of new jobs through energy efficiency and renewables is pending. It’s important for the state’s primary highercducational institution’s news paper to cover this event. Several radio stations and newspa pers covered it, but where was the DN? Jeff Riggert director University of Nebraska Environ mental Resource Center Pacifists Paula Lavigne’s column (DN, Feb. 7) was an example of politically cor rect revisionist history. She states, “In general, Indians were peace-seeking pacifists.” What does she mean? Were run-of-the-mill American immigrants less peace-seeking? Enl ighten me, but I have seldom heard of an Indian group that did not practice warfare. Hunting was a common activity for males, and warfare blended with hunt ing. Raiding was very common. Scat tered, almost defenseless homesteads were easy targets. How many unpro voked attacks occurred along the Mohawk Valley between 1750 and 1810? Or, closer to home, what hap pened across southern Nebraska dur ing the summer of 1864? My Irish-immigrant anccstors feared Lavigne’s“pacifists.” Movies aside, few civilians were skilled at guerrilla war fare. The U.S. army was too slow and tactically clumsy to be effective at de fense. The sheer numbers and persis tence of the army eventually eliminated the perceived, and sporadically very real, threat on the frontier. The average adult male American Indian, though few in number, was much more skillful tactically than some unsuspecting potato farmer. Apart from a few hundred fur trappers in the 1880s, people almost universally dreaded the Indian. The army feared them to such an extent that troops in combat were known to resort to suicide. I’ve worked with Indians in the oil fields of California, and I’ve served be side Indians as an infantryman in the U.S. Army. I’ve never avoided contact with Indians, and I’ve never had a bad experi ence. Indians are generally fine people. Nevertheless, I don’t find it necessary to falsify what conditions actually existed on the frontier. Robert J. Tobin graduate student geology Big-city ghettos In Todd Cooper’s column (DN, Feb. 3), he speaks of the big-city ghettos as if he knew them personally, as ifhc knows the turmoil that plays on individuals from these areas. HasCoopereverlived in a big-city ghetto? Has he ever visited one? Just because an individual lives in the ghetto docs not necessarily make the ghetto live in them. Cooper makes the mistake of as suming that because T yrone Williams may be from the inner city, he is a product of inner-city crimes. He may not even be from the ghetto. If Cooper knew, he failed to mention it. Yet it was so easy to use the problems ofbig city ghettos to justify what Williams may nave done, without asking what prompted his anger. Gun problems reach beyond big-city ghettos. Forcxample, it was a small suburb of Omaha that received national attention in Newsweek last summer. The article focused on problems occurring in pre dominately white communities. MTV featured gang members from an Oma ha suburb discussing their infatuations with firearms earlier this year. As soon as a young man commits a crime. Cooper’s mind immediately races to find a solution. The first place it stops is the big-city ghettos, as if only ghettos breed criminals. Will iams could have just been having a bad day and that was just the way he chose, with no connection to big-city ghettos whatsoever, to vent his anger and frustrations. What Williams did may not have been the smartest thing to have done, but Cooper isn’t here to pass judgment on anyone else. The sad part is, Cooper bases his case on Williams being the product of the ghetto without knowing if he is or not. It’s always easier to look into some one else’s backyard and talk about how many weeds they have. But I think Cooper needs to check the weeds growing around himself. Problems with guns and violence extend beyond the big-city ghettos, but it is only the problems in the big-city ghettos that make it to the five, six and 10 o’clock news. This gives individuals like Coo per the notion that big-city ghettos are dangerous. But surrounding commu nities are just as violent. Linda Kay Morgan senior broadcasting
