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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 3, 1995)
Opinion Friday, February 3,1995 Page 4 ' . . j •' - ' ’ ' 1 . -T . .. , ' - Daily 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 Costly cap Cuts not a solution to special ed costs Nebraska spent $122 million this year on special education. That’s almost twice as much as taxpayers paid in 1988. This rise in spending has Gov. Ben Nelson worried. In an effort to cut spending, he has recommended a spending cap at this year s amount. . . Cutting spending, reducing the burden on taxpayers, tightening the budget—this all sounds good and rational. But special education costs are not rising because spending is out of control. Costs are rising because more students are being enrolled in special education. Some educators say this increase is because more children are bom to parents with drug or alcohol addictions and more children are being raised in unhealthy homes. ... A cap on education will cut spending, but at what cost. It will become more and more difficult for schools to take care of chil dren with special education needs. Those children will receive less attention and less access to needed resources. It is a problem that more children need special education, but it is not a spending problem, and it will not be solved by spending less money helping those children. Spending should not be attacked. Problems such as drug addic tion and abuse should be attacked. If we ignore those problems and cap Special education spending, we will have an increasing number of children splitting a stagnant pool of resources. The qual ity of their education will decrease with their increasing numbers. Gov. Nelson is trying to help taxpayers. But the parents of those children are also taxpayers. And their children deserve a quality public education. Quotes of the week “It’s a tiny arm of the government, it*s not even a major arm, and they want to amputate that?” — JoAnn Schmidman, director of Omaha Magic Theater, about the proposed cuts to the Natiotial Endowment for the Arts. “My mind thinks I can do more than my body is letting me do. It is kind of frustrating. I want to be out there.” — Emily Thompson, injured Nebraska women's basketball player. “Now that the O.J. Simpson jury has been officially sequestered, we can tell the story.” — Marilyn Rothe, Fox spokeswoman, about the network's movie about Simpson's life. “There is no way in God’s green earth you can get a trillion-dollar cut without cutting social programs.” — Charles Lamphear, professor of economics and director of the Bureau of Business Research at UNL, about the proposed bal anced budget amendment. Editorial policy Staff editorials represent the official policy of the Spring 1995. Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Editori aisdonotnecessarilyreflectthe views of the university, its employees, the students or the NU BoandofRegents. Editorial columns represent the 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. Latter policy The Doily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor from all readers and interested others! Letters will be selected for publication on the basis ofclarity, originality, timeliness and space available. The Daily Nebraskan retains therighttoedit 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, 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 ‘Degrading’ ad I am writing in regard to the ad for the “Strip Pool” video that appeared in the Daily Nebraskan (Feb. 1 and 2). This is an ad that belongs in Playboy or some other smut magazine. It does not belong in a college newspaper. This ad is degrading to the women on this campus. I am outraged that part of my student fees go toward funding this newspaper. It’s bad enough that you have columnists like Jamie Karl, who do nothing but spout off Rush Limbaugh rhetoric. Now you are running ads for pornography! I hope that in the future you will be more selective about the ads you run. Lori Savery junior women’s studies and English Which will die? “Yeah, dem cullered folks got souls, but I do too and I’ll be damned if somebody gonna tell me which one’s more important,” a slaveowner of the early 1800s argued. “Yes, ze Jew may have a zoul, but I do as veil und mine iz more important,” a Nazi in the early 1900s argued. “Yes, I believe a fetus has a soul. And I do, too.... And no one ... is going to tell me which soul matters most,” a Cindy Lange-Kubick of the late 1900s argued. Unfortunately, most individuals of pro-death inclination will find Lange-Kubick’s column a poignant, essay of the choices facing the modem feminist mother. However, this foolish argument identifies Lange-Kubick’s association of a soul to the fetus as a different association than Lange-Kubick’s soul to Lange-Kubick. Poppycock. Lange-Kubick has stumbled James Mehsling/DN across an important truth, that the fetus has a soul. Since it would be arbitrary and inconsistent for us to argue that this soul is different from the soul of one outside the womb, we are morally obliged to care for our children from the moment of conception. Otherwise, we’re making the same choice for death as slaveowners did, as Hitler did, as Stalin did, as Pol Pot did, and the list goes on and on and on. How can we morally choose who, among the innocent, will die? Shane Tucker senior biology Chris Funk In the article “Right to Life calls for boycott” (Feb. 1), Chris Funk, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Lincoln, is quoted as saying, “I think we should require all priests to take History 101. They should be reminded this is not a theocracy, and this country has its roots in the separation of church and state.” Funk needs some refresher courses of her own. First of all, this country has its roots in freedom from the religious bigotry that forced the Pilgrims and the Puritans to leave their home. They believed that their faith should not jeopar dize their rights as citizens to freedom of religion and freedom of speech. The priests in question were exercising those rights as citizens to advocate a position, which they are free to do, whether that position is that Elvis is alive, or that a fetus can have a distinct gender and blood type from its mother and still be just a part of her body to do with as she will, or that abortion is wrong. This is democracy in action, not theocracy, and regardless of what Funk may think, religious convic tion does not strip a person of one’} citizenship in this country, at least not yet. If Funk finds the actions of the priests so objectionable because of their religious beliefs, then can we assume she feels that the Christians who opposed slavery in the 1800s, because they saw it as being wrong in the eyes of God, should have remained silent, lest they unconsti tutionally impose their religion and morality upon the slaveowners? Shall we assume that she feels that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. should have stayed away from social commentary on issues such as discrimination and segregation while in the pulpit? Only a fool would seriously suggest these things, and Funk is no fool. It seems rather obvious that what Funk wants is for people of faith who have the unmitigated gall to disagree with her to be silenced, lest she should actually have to defend her position in honest debate. Brad Pardee Love Library Staff