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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 20, 1995)
I Opinion Friday, January 20,1995 Page 4 Nebraskan Editorial Board University of Nebraska-Lincoln JeffZeleny...Editor, 472-1766 Jeff Robb.Managing Editor Matt Woody. .Opinion Page Editor DeDra Janssen.Associate News Editor Rainbow Rowell.Arts & Entertainment Editor James Mehsling..Cartoonist Chris Hain....Senior Reporter Move on Omaha engineering college is old issue Sen. Chris Abboud and 13 other misguided Omaha senators signed on to a bill Thursday in the Legislature calling for a sepa rate engineering college in Omaha. Talk about beating a dead horse. LB735, sponsored by Abboud, is two paragraphs long and says nothing new or substantive in this lingering debate. The bill says economic conditions in Omaha demand a separate engineering college and calls for the Legislature to appropriate money for it. These legislators are sticking their overzealous noses where they don’t belong. U-niversity President Dennis Smith has decided a separate en gineering college isn’t in the best interests of the U-niversity, the U-niversity Board of Regents agreed and the Governor has funded improvements recommended by the U-niversity. In case state senators don’t understand, the U in U-niversity stands for United, Unanimous, UNL, UNK and UNO. The task force has spoken. The consultants have spoken. The president has spoken. And finally the regents have spoken. The decision did not abandon the Omaha engineering problem. It established programs there and additional monies have been made available to Omaha. If LB735 moves through the Legislature, it will sure to be a fight between urban and rural senators. Sen. Abboud, don’t waste our time with this bill. It’s time to move on to legislation that hasn’t been debated. Quotes of the week “Our conciousnesses are not up for majority rule.” — State Sen. Dave Landis, an abortion rights advocate, at a Thursday night rally. “Lincoln is a family town, and many people don’t want it. I don’t think women in Lincoln would use it.” — Pam Tabor, president of Lincoln Right to Life, on the probable creation of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. “A part of scouting... is learning to be a responsible citizen. And part of that is paying your taxes.” — Maine tax assessor John LaFaver, on a state-proposed 6percent “snack tax” on Girl Scout cookies. “It says a lot about this team that we stuck together through thick and thin, with thousands of people against us. Nobody ever gave us a shot.” — Wide receiver Tony Martin of the San Diego Chargers, after the Chargers defeated Pittsburgh 17-13 in the AFC Championship on Sunday. “Thank you for bringing the children out. I promise you I won’t say or do anything on stage to embarrass you or your family.” —- Blues musician B.B. King, at Sunday night’s concert at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. Editorial policy Staff editorials represent the official policy of the Spaing 1995. Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Editori als do notnecessarilyreflecttbe views of the university, its employees, die students or the NU BoaidofRegents. Editorial columns representthe opin ion of the author. The regents publish the Daily Nebraskan. They establish the UNL Publications Board to su pervise the daily production of the paper. According topolicy set by the regents, responsibility for the edito rial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its students. Letter policy The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to *' editor from all readers and interested others. Letters will be selected forpublicarion on the basis ofclarity, originality, timeliness and space available. The Daily Nebraskan retains the right toedit or reject all material submitted. Readers also are welcome to submit ma terial 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 pub lished. Letters should included the author’s name, year in school, mzyor and group affiliation, if any. Requests to withhold names will not be granted. SutHnitmaterial to the Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St, Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448. -EUKTM& P^OOFT NebraskanS readers say: f Send your brief letters to: Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St, Lincoln, Neb. 68588. Or fax to: (402) 472-1761. Letters must be signed and include a phone number for verification. Great Idea According to the Daily Nebras kan article “Peers now will decide student parking appeals” (Jan. 18), some genius cooked up the idea that students should hear students appealing parking citations. And “two faculty groups” will form a “separate faculty appeals board.” These are great ideas. However, our genius didn’t think it all through. Where can the staffs concerns be heard? They need a separate board. And full professors, of course, can only be judged by other full professors. So we need a separate board for them. And separate boards for the associate and assistant professors. And a board for visitors. And regents. And come to think of it, men could only be judged by other men. Ditto for women. Oh, and don’t forget the different ethnic groups — the Irish can only be judged by the Irish, etc. And let’s apply this to other committees, too: A search commit tee for a dean position ought to be composed only of other deans, the Police Advisory only of police, etc. ad infinitum! Ah, my beloved UNL, someone really put the cart before the horse! Chris Brantner Lincoln Abortion clinic The way we say something often reveals as much as what we say. Dominic Pynes is reported, in the Daily Nebraskan article “Planned Parenthood fears violence, tightens security” (Jan. 19), to have said that the proposed Planned Parenthood clinic might invite violence to Lincoln. He asserts that 99 percent of abortion opponents are nonviolent, but that the violent majority could be drawn to Lincoln by the clinic. The rhetoric is familiar. It lays blame for acts of violence at the feet of the victim. The thinking works like this: Sure, some abortion opponents go a tad far by stalking and shooting people or firebombing clinics. So if you open a reproductive counseling clinic (which, for ease of conversa tion, we call an abortion clinic), you are asking for such zealots to travel across the country to view the abomination. Once they arrive, the very existence of your clinic invites violent attack. Your horrible practices beg our weapon-toting colleagues to kill doctors. Or nurses. Or staff members. Or women clients. Maybe even their unborn fetuses. Don’t blame us. Righteous murder means never having to say you’re really sorry. Robert Bergstrom associate professor English AmySchmidl/DN Jamie Karl Last semester, we eagerly made our way down to the breakfast table every Friday morning. We sat down in hopes of finding a Daily Nebras kan that some early riser had already brought home. Ignoring coffee stains and encrusted Lucky Charms marshmallows, passing by the front-page headlines and even “Calvin and Hobbes” we’d flip to the opinion pages. We dragged ourselves out of bed to read Jamie Karl’s latest column, where we were assured to find eloquent and refreshing examples of values, traditions, family, religion and conservatism. He never wrote one that we didn’t go right back to and read over again. Sometimes he challenged our views. Sometimes he made us mad. Sometimes he made us laugh at ourselves. Following our second run through of Karl’s column, we’d scan the letters to the editor to scrutinize the feedback still being generated from the previous week’s Karl column. Anyone familiar with the Daily Nebraskan knows that this feedback was rarely, if ever, positive. We decided it was high time someone voiced a bit of support. Whether Karl examined the dangers of homosexuality, pointed out the importance of traditional values or simply highlighted the beauty of lessons found in “Forrest Gump,” his columns were appreci ated in our book. We look forward to reading Karl’s columns again this semester. Keep up the good work, Jamie. You have more supporters than you might imagine. Shelley Moses junior advertising Stephanie Nelson junior sociology Pay for play Sen, Ernie Chambers is wrong. Football players and other varsity athletes do get paid. It’s called a free college education. Let’s remember, they are here as students first, who just happen to play a little football along the way. Mark D. Mercer sophomore broadcasting