Christian music wins UNL
listeners, page 11
. March 16, 1995
By Jeff Zeleny
and J. Christopher Hain
<0 daily Nebraskan
Chancellor Graham Spanier will
likely be named to
day the president of
Pennsylvania State
University, the
Daily Nebraskan
confirmed Wednes
day.
Sources in Lin
coln and Pennsyl
vania, who spoke
on the condition of
anonymity, said
Spanier was the
lone finalist for the position.
The Penn State University Board
i - -
Graham
Spanier
of Trustees will vote to confirm one
candidate during a special meeting at
12:30 pm. CST today in Hershey,
Pa., said Roger Williams, a Penn State
spokesman.
The trustees will announce their
decision, and likely Spanier as the
new president, at a 1:30 p.m. press
conference.
“The hope is that the candidate will
be confirmed and present for the press
conference,” Williams said. The trust
ees' vote is said to be merely a formal
ity.
Williams said he could neither con
firm nor deny whether Spanier was the
finalist. Two members ofthe Board of
Trustees also told the Daily Nebras
kan that names of finalists were confi
dential.
Spanier, who has been the UNL
chancellor since 1991, worked at Penn
State from 1973 to 1982. He began his
work as an administrator there in 1979,
when he was appointed an associate
dean in the College of Human Devel
opment.
Spanier, 46, has repeatedly de
clined to comment on his employment
status at the University of Nebraska
Lincoln. The chancellor met with
deans and directors at 8:30 a.m.
Wednesday and left town a few hours
later.
After the meeting, Eric Jolly, di
rector of affirmative action and diver
sity at UNL, told the Daily Nebraskan
that Spanier would be in State Col
lege, Pa., today and Friday. But Jolly
said he did not know why Spanier
would be there.
The UNL public relations office
declined to say if Spanier was in Penn
sylvania, but said he was out of town.
Speculation about Spanier’s future
at UNL began last week, when the
Daily Nebraskan was first to report
that he declined an offer to be presi
dent of the University of Washington
in Seattle.
Since then, UNLofficialshave been
relatively quiet about the possibility .
of Spanier leaving Nebraska.
Student Regent Andrew Loudon
told the Daily Nebraskan on Wednes-.
day that he had been informed of'
Spanier’s involvement in the Penn
State presidency.
“I have received strong indications
that he is going to accept the job,”
Loudon said. He declined to elabo
rate.
Penn State President Joab Thomas
has said he would retire Aug. 31. Tho
mas’ annual salary for governing the
69,000-student university system is
about $200,000. The UNL chancellor
earns about $150,000 a year.
Questions about Spanier’s future
continued to arise on the UNL campus
this week. As chancellor, he has been
praised for his commitment to aca
demics and diversity. His opponents
have said Spanier had a liberal agenda
that could be detrimental to the uni
versity.
James Griesen, UNL vice chancel -
See SPANIER on 6
Deep thoughts
_ . Jon Waller/DN
Freshman music education major Karl Perkins studies before class near Sheldon Art Gallery Wednesday afternoon.
™|!?®2m5£ ** another warm day today, with a high around 75. Morning fog should turn into
ToSL9htu? '?'■ *^SP°,me Partly cloudy wrth a low around 40. me last day of classes before spring break
will be cooler with a high in the lower to mid-60s.
Micron publicity helps lure Pfizer
By Paula Lavtgne
Senior Reporter . . .. j
Although Micron Technology Inc. did not
choose Omaha for its new plants the national
publicity will help lure other corporations to the
state, officials said Wednesday.
One of those corporations, Pfizer Inc., is
considering Lincoln as a site rdf Its corporate
headquarters, now in New Yor£
Pfizer already has a plant in Lincoln, which
it purchased from SmithKline Beecham Animal
Health. Pfizer’s Lincoln plant specializes in
animal pharmaceuticals.
Mary Simmons, director of business recruit
ment for the Nebraska Department for Eco
nomic Development, said Micron’s loss raised
the odds for future investments.
kind ofpublicity is expensive to go out
and buy,” she said. “We’ve just got to keep
going.”
Publicizingrecent legislation that would pro
vide tax incentives for new businesses also
would help recruiting efforts, said Eric
Carstenson, senior vice president of govern
ment affairs and finance at the Lincoln Cham
ber of Commerce.
“This legislation projects the image that
Nebraska is good for business,” he said.
He did not say if Pfizer met the requirements
of the legislation. However, he did say he was
working with several businesses that did.
Simmons said she could not compare Mi
cron to Pfizer, but she said the department was
working with several projects.
“Every project is the next Micron,” she said.
“Micron was just publicly played out in the
press.”
The department researches the needs of each
business and tries to meet its criteria, she said.
The projects are kept confidential so the com
petition does not discover Nebraska’s strengths.
Simmons said the department presented sup
port industries, education, utilities and trans
portation asincentives for each business.
“We ha ye long romances and short romances,
and Micron was a relatively short romance,”
she said. “I can’t make predictions for Pfizer.”
Bob Fauteux, Pfizer spokesman, said a site
evaluation team would spend a few months
studying the sites and then report to the com
pany.
The team will look at the personnel, business
and financial perspectives of each site, he said.
Fauteux said Pfizer did not have a specific
deadline and would not name other sites in the
study.
Fauteux said he was unaware of the Micron
decision, but Pfizer also may look at the finan
cial prospects of tax incentives.
Nebraska legislative bills 828,829 and 830
will provide incentives for businesses that can
provide 500jobs and $50 million investment or
250 jobs and $100 million investment.
Fauteux said he could not discuss the invest
ment or employment aspects of Pfizer’s new
headquarters, but they would uphold Pfizer’s
standards for nationwide, research-based glo
bal health care.
Pfizer would face competition from at least
six other similar companies in Nebraska, in
cluding Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Lincoln,
Pharma Qiemie in Syracuse, MVP Laborato
ries in Ralston and Western Laboratories, ABS
Corporation and Chemical Safety Products in
Omaha.
Pfizer reported sales of approximately $8.3
billion in 1994 and spent more than $1.1 billion
on research and development.
Pfizer purchased SmithKline Beecham for
$1.45 billion. Both companies are leaders in
animal pharmaceutical production in the United
States.
SmithKline Beecham’s operations in Eu
rope and Australia also complement Pfizer’s
presence in Latin America, Japan and Southeast
Asia.
Gun proposal
requires good
mental health
By Matthew Waite
Senior Reporter
Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady said
Wednesday that he keeps a file in his office that
scares him.
In that file are permits to own handguns that
he says he probably shouldn’t have granted, but
had to legally.
Some of the permits he has granted have had
deadly results.
LEGISLATURE
Casady named four people
— Tanner, Jeff, Jennifer
and Chris—that died from
murders or suicides involv
ing handguns.
“They were carrying per
mits that had my name on
it.”
Casady made his remarks
before the Nebraska
Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, which was
hearing testimony on LB778.
The bill, sponsored by Sens. Don Wesely
and Chris Beutler of Lincoln, would provide
law enforcement officers with mental health
information about people applying for handgun
permits.
Casady told the committee that under current
Nebraska law, people can be denied permits
only if they have committed felonies or are
mentally unstable.
As of now, he said, law enforcement officers
have no access to mental status information.
Another incident where mental health infor
mation would have saved a life, Casady said,
happened just this month. He said a Lincoln
man was granted a permit, bought a handgun
and shot himself, all in a matter of hours.
Casady said that often times, when he knows
a problem will come from a permit, all he can do
legally is sign the permit and hope.
“Hope doesn’t always work,” he said.
In opposition to the bill, Frank Schlangen
said that he had been diagnosed as a paranoid
schizophrenic and had been hospitalized sev
eral times. He said the last time was 1987.
Schlangen said he agreed that there needed
to be restrictions on mentally ill patients getting
handguns. But he said there needed to be unifor
mity on county health boards, which are often
made of people inexperienced in mental health.
After the nearing, Casady said he didnot fed
personally responsible for deaths related to
permits he had granted, but he couldn’t help but
feel terrible. r
“You wish there was something you could
have done,” he said. “If the Legislature doesn’t
give us the tools to make an informed decision,
I don’t see how they can, with a straight face,
give us this responsibility.”
In executive session, the committee decided
not to vote on the bill until mental health infor
See HEARING on 8