insidel
><><»><><{><»<><»<><»>
Nebraska
second rc
Arts &
Hootie &
for Toad i
COVERING THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA SINCE 1901 VOL. 94 NO. 126 pagC 9_
_ _March 17-19, 1995_
f-----1
‘This is like coming home’
The Associated Press
Retiring Penn State President Joab Thomas stands with his successor, UN L Chancellor Graham Spanier, on Thursday
in Hersney, Pa., after the Penn State Board of Trustees elected Spanier to the position.
Another Spanier
would suit Regents
By Matthew Waite
Senior Reporter
Regent Chairwoman Nancy O’Brien said
Thursday she expected to attract stellar can
didates to replace outgoing Chancellor Gra
ham Spanier.
O’Brien said the challenge to continue
bpamer s legacy would attract big nahies in
hi^ier education.
NU President Dennis Smith said in a
release he would appoint a search committee
within the next 30 days. He also said he
would appoint an interim chancellor, who
would start in August and continue until a
permanent replacement was found. Spanier
starts his new job Sept. 1.
O’Brien said it would be improper for the
Board of Regents to give input on what it
would like to see in a replacement for Spanier.
She said the decision was up to the president.
Regent Don Blank ot McCook, who was
chairman of the regents when Spanier was
hired, said he didn’t want to see much change
with a new chancellor.
“I’d be excited if we had another Graham
Spanier,” he said.
Blank said the board might hold a mini
assessment of UNL’s needs with the presi
dent, students and faculty.
Regent Chuck Hassebrook of Walthill,
said he had a lot to learn about the search
process. The committee must “overturn ev
ery stone” to find the top candidate, he said.
—i
UNL chancellor
named president
of Penn State
By J. Christopher Hain
Senior Reporter
In recent months, Chancellor Graham
Spanier had become a wanted man in the
national academic arena.
Spanier said he didn’t seek the offers to
lead various institutions, including the Uni
versity of Washington and Penn State Uni
versity, but they came anyway.
One offer, he said, stood above all others
—the chance to govern Pennsylvania State
University. The chance to return to the 23
campus system where he began his adminis
trative career. The chance to return home.
But Penn State might not have gotten its
man had Spanier accepted a job as president
of the University of Washington in Seattle.
After the UW offer, Penn State sped up its
selection process because it did not want
Spanier to be lured away, Herb Howe, asso
ciate to the UNL chancellor, told the Daily
Nebraskan Thursday.
Spanier said several universities had ap
proached him with potential job offers. But
he said he never applied for any of them.
“I never applied for a position like this
here or anywhere else,” he said during a
press conference in Hershey, Pa.
Spanier was unanimously confirmed by
the Board of Trustees Thursday as the Penn
State president during a special meeting.
Spanier, 46, will succeed Joab Thomas on
Sept. 1.
Spanier, who has been the UNL chancel
lor since 1991, said the opportunity to lead
one of the nation’s most distinguished uni
versities was “a dream come true.”
Spanier worked at Penn State from 1973
to 1982 in the College of Human Develop
ment. He said he grew up professionally in
University Park, Pa.
“For us, this is like coming home,” Spanier
said.
Sandra Spanier, the chancellor’s wife,
earned her master’s and doctorate’s degrees
at Penn State. Since 1982, they have worked
together at three universities, including UNL,
where she is an associate professor of En
See SPANIER on 3
Irish student enjoys U.S.
but misses her homeland
oy rauia uavigne
Senior Reporter ~
With a nation of people wearing green and
pretending to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, it’s
hard to find a real four-leaf clover in the bunch.
But when Nuala Kennedy’s Irish eyes are
smiling, they’re not lying.
Kennedy , an international business major at
the University of Nebraska-Uncoln, is a native
qf Dumdalk-Newry in County Down, Ireland.
She came to UNL from Scotland’s Edinburg
University and has a job lined up in France after
graduation. Kennedy already has traveled around
western Europe and America’s West Coast.
Pictures of American pop icon James Dean
plaster her walls, and Pringles cans line her
shelf. A thick book sits on the shelf.
“It’s my James Joyce book,” she said, smil
ing, “I’d never live without it.”
When she arrived in Nebraska last semester,
Kennedy made her first discovery—American
football. She got a taste of Husker mania when
she went to the UCLA game in September.
“It lasted so long. I was amazed they were
taking a break for commercials,” she said. “I
didn’t understand that at all.
“I just knew they had to get the ball from one
end of the field to the other,” she said.
There’s no sport like American football in
Ireland, but Ireland’s football is the same as
American soccer.
Kennedy, who works at the Campus Recre
ation Center, always wondered why people were
frustrated when she handed them soccer balls
when they asked for footballs.
Even though she didn’t understand Ameri
can football, Kennedy caught national champi
onship fever. During the Orange Bowl, she said,
she was at a bar in Seattle, and the people in the
bar were cheering for “the other team.”
“I didn’t even know who they were playing,
but I thought I might as well support Nebraska,”
she said. “Then they started winning, and I
thought, ‘Yeah, that’s OK!’”
Although Kennedy says she loves Lincoln,
she notices the differences from Ireland.
“Everyone wears the same clothes. They’re
See IRISH on 6
Journalists reflect the irony
of witnessing death penalty
By Brian Sharp
Senior Reporter 1
Unimaginable.
Horrific..
Surreal.
The words only begin to explain what wit
nesses saw inside Nebraska’s State Penitentiary
on Sept. 2,1994. While a crowd outside cel
ebrated and cheered, Harold Lamont Otey be
came the first person executed by the state in 35
years.
And on Wednesday, Nebraska is scheduled
to carry out its second execution in six months.
Robert E. Williams has been sentenced to
die in Nebraska’s electric chair shortly after
midnight March 22. Williams, 57; was con
victed for the 1977 Lincoln murdersofCatherine
Brooks and Patricia McGarry. Williams also
was convicted of raping Brooks.
Media witnesses for both executions talked
to the Daily Nebraskan this weekabout the story
that all said was the most difficult of their
careers.
***
Ed Howard, a correspondent with The Asso
ciated Press, witnessed Otey’s execution. He is
also one of five media witnesses named for
Williams’ scheduled execution.
“I have been a reporter for 28 years,” Howard
said. “I have seen a lot of death and a lot of
dying. But it goes without saying that one does
not forget the sight of watching another person
die.
“There is occasionally a little voice that says
‘I don’t know how many of these I have left in
me.’ I don’t know if I have another of these left
in me.”
Les^e Boellstorff, a reporter with the Omaha
World-Herald, said she knew what to expect
when she arrived at the prison that night. But
what she remembers most isn’t the execution,
she said; it was the waiting.
Two minutes lapsed after the curtain to the
death chamber was opened—revealing a man
who was masked and strapped into a wooden
See WITNESS on 6