JULY 7
1994
VOL. 93
NO. 159
UNIVERSITY
OF
NEBRASKA
LINCOLN
Inside:
Malone
Skin Cancer
Gump
War Room
—Page 2
—Page 3
—Page 9
—Page 10
Courtesy of Herbert Stwtz Jason Levkulich/DN
Mike Fen and Anne Draper stand by one of Whittier Junior High School’s exits. The image would grace Whittier’s last
yearbook cover in 1977.
While university officials debate its fate, the Whittier building deteriorates with each passing day.
Whittierschoolunitedneighborhood
By Brian Sharp
Stall Raportar
Sunday, March 5,1977.
On sidewalks ihroughout Lin
coln. chalked messages plead
for the life of a neighborhood school.
One message reads: “Without a
junior high, our community would
die."
Tuesday, March 7, 1977.
The Lincoln Board of Education
votes 5-1 in favor of closing Whittier
Junior High School.
It was ruled a victim of changing
times.
But some neighbors saw it as the
final blow from a city that had de
stroyed their home.
By that time, the city owned more
than 80 percent of the Malone neigh
borhood.
Bancroft Elementary School had
been closed.
And now Whittier.
Their neighborhood was being
Closing the former model jr. high school
hastens demise of working-class community
squeezed out. Industry on one side.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
on another. And the city developers
were jumping right in the middle.
In 1923, Whittier had opened with
a price tag of $780,000 in the poorer
section of Lincoln. It was where the
bluc-collarworkers lived. Where chil
dren rarely went to school more than
five or six years.
Whittier was heralded as both a
local and national model for junior
high schools, and would later be mir
rored in Irving and Everett junior
high.
In his dissertation, James Keill
quoted then Superintendent. M.C.
Lcflcr as saying the board chose the
Whittier sight because, “it was in a
poorer section and they figured if it
could be built there — thereby have a
demonstration of what it would be.
that you couldn’t prevent it from go
ing to the better sections of the com
munity — which resulted in exactly
the way they figured.”
By the 1930s, Whittier was thriv
ing, the Malone neighborhood was a
close-knit community and the univer
sity was just a small school on the
other side of the tracks.
Holbert S. Bradley grew up there.
“There was nothing but kids,” Bra
dley said of the old neighborhood.
Malone spread out in all direc
tions, from 14th-lo 22nd streets, and
Vinc-to S streets. And the schools
were packed, Bradley said.
Then he went away.
Years later, when he came back,
what he found was not his home.
“They (the city) look a lot of the
community out,” he said. “There were
no children left.” .
In the years before it closed, enroll
ment at Whittier had fallen from 1,250
to less than 300.
Many families had been “relocat
ed” elsewhere in the city. The air base
had closed. But those weren’t the only
reasons for the decline.
In 1969, Goodrich Junior High was
opened.
Boundaries were shifted and trans
fers were easy to come by. Whittier
had a reputation by then, an image—
and it was a bad one.
To many, Whittier was seen as a
rough school, in adcclining, industri
al neighborhood of low income fami
lies and minority children.
But the decisions made by the school
board inopcningGoodrich were “chief
grounds on which federal agencies or
the courts frequently charge school
boards in civil rights eases,” accord
ing to an article in the Lincoln Jour
nal. dated March 9, 1977. •
See WHITTIER on 3
Birth control
doesn’t mean
STD control
By Angela Jones
Staff Reporter
While most sexually ac
tive young people take
precautions to prevent
pregnancy, few protect them
selves against sexually transmit
ted diseases. A recent survey by
the Alan Guttmachcr Institute
shows that more teenagers use
oral contraceptives rather than
condoms.
“Oral contraceptives arc a
highly effective method of birth
control, but they offer no protec
tion against sexually transmit
ted diseases,” said Susan Pow
ers-Alcxander, director of Edu
cation and Training at Planned
Parenthood of Lincoln.
“Teenagers must realize that
if they choose to have sex,
condoms provide the only pro
tection against all STDs,” said
Peggy Clarke, president of the
American Social Health Associ
ation. “While the rate of teenage
pregnancy may be stabilizing,
the rate of STDs among teens is
soaring.”
The Guttmacher survey indi
cates that sexually active young
people are twice as likely to
choose oral contraceptives as
condoms. Of those surveyed ages
15-24,50 percent use birth con
trol pills, 22 percent use
condoms, 9 percent use other
contraceptive methods and 19
percent do not use any method.
Two-thirds of the 12 million
new STD infections in the U.S.
each year occur in people under
25.
See STD S on 2
Contraceptive Methods
of Choice
Ages 15 to 24:
llrth Control Pill*
No protection
Ages 19 and under:
I Source: Amarlcnn Social Haatth Ataociatlon
DN Graphic
