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COVERING THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA SINCE 1901 VOL. 95 NO. 22 -—
. .. .... _September 20, 1995_
Off-field events continue to plague Huskers
Sports Illustrated:
Osborne undertakes
role of judge, jury
ByJeffZeleny
<& 1995 Daily Nebraskan
Nebraska coach Tom Osborne has been at
torney, judge and jury in addition to being the
most successful college football coach in the
country, Sports Illustrated says in its edition to
be released this week.
“I don’t tell Tom Osborne how to run the
football department, and he should stay out of
the criminal justice system,” Lancaster County
Attorney Gary Lacey told the magazine.
The Sports Illustrated story, “Coach: The
Jury,” was obtained Tuesday by the Daily Ne
braskan. The magazine will be sent to subscrib
ers and sold to newsstands this week.
Three reporters from the magazine were in
Lincoln last week with the pack of national
media who covered Lawrence Phillips’ arrest
on misdemeanor assault and trespassingcharges.
After Phillips was arrested, he was suspended
last week from the Nebraska football team. He
pleaded no contest to the charges Tuesday, and
a guilty plea was entered by a county judge.
A source close to the football team told the
magazine that Phillips would likely play by the
Oct. 28 game against Colorado.
Lacey told the magazine that Osborne has
interviewed witnesses in criminal cases, of
fered opinions on the innocence of players who
haven’t stood trial and attacked the credibility
of witnesses testifying against his players.
“That’s (Osborne) using his influence to
disrupt the criminal justice system,” Lacey said
in the magazine story. “Osborne talks to wit
nesses. Whether he tried to influence them or
not, I haven’t heard of any specific instances.
See SI on 6
Phillips changes plea,
prosecutor dismisses
case against Benning
By Jeff Zeleny
Senior Reporter —— —
Exactly one week after Nebraska I-back
Lawrence Phillips pleaded innocent to three
charges, he changed his plea to no contest and
was found guilty of assault and trespassing.
Lancaster County Judge Jack Lindner en
tered a guilty plea for Phillips during a brief
court appearance Tuesday. A destruction of
property charge was dropped, but Phillips agreed
to pay restitution for damages to a door at the
Meadow Woods Apartments.
Phillips will be sentenced Dec. 1.
Phillips’ news came the same day the pros
ecuting attorney decided not to press assault
charges against No. 2 I-back Damon Benning.
But all news was not good for the Husker
tailbacks. No. 31-back James Sims is scheduled
for trial Nov. 7 on an assault charge.
Nebraska coach Tom Osborne said Phillips
could return to the defending national champi
onship Comhuskers in about a month if he
received medical attention to control his anger.
Benning’s and Sims’ playing status has not been
questioned.
Phillips was accused of assaulting Kate
McEwen, a sophomore guard on the NU
women’s basketball team. On Sept. 10, police
say Phillips scaled a wall to the third-floor ^
apartment of transfer quarterback Scott Frost. ™
Phillips was accused of assaulting McEwen
both inside and outside Frost’s apartment.
Phillips was ordered last week to have no
contact with McEwen or Frost until his trial,
which was originally scheduled for Nov. 17.
Now, Phillips will not stand trial, but instead
will be sentenced after the regular season ends.
See FOOTBALL on 2
lNew center
no ordinary
science abode
By Angie Schendt
Staff Reporter
The George W. Beadle Center stands out
from other buildings on campus in many ways.
“Visually, it is not just another classroom
Beadle
Center
building, said Mark
Metcalf, project manager
and director for the center.
Metcalf said the building’s
structure was unique to meet
the requirements of depart
ments housed in the build
ing.
The Department of Bio
chemistry, the Center for
Biotechnology offices, 35
percent ofthe School of Bio
logical Sciences and some labs for chemical
engineering all are housed in the Beadle Center.
The stacks on top of the building allow mass
quantities of air to be exhausted from the build
ing, Metcalf said. The Occupational Safety and
Health Administration requires that the exhaust
stacks be a certain height above the building,
much like a chimney, Metcalf said.
“They can’t recirculate the air because of the
potential of contamination,” he said.
But the Beadle Center stacks are not hidden
like on other buildings, Metcalf said.
“We decided to celebrate it,” he said.
The building’s exhaust, communication and
temperature systems also are somewhat new to
NU, Metcalf said.
The Beadle Center is handicap accessible
and designed in an “L” shape, with the entrance
at the elbow of the “L.” The elbow also serves
as a community space where people congre
gate, he said.
The legs of the “L” are where the day-to-day
functions of the building take place, he said. It
is common for the building’s occupants to work
in teams, Metcalf said, so the offices are set up
in little blocks.
The building also will be used for general'
purposes, said Larry Blake, project inspector.
“There is one large lecture hall and three
classrooms,” he said.
But the building mainly will be used for
teaching and research, said Marion O’Leary,
head of the biochemistry department.
Blake said the departments in the north wing
moved into the building in July, and the depart
ments in the east wing moved in August.
The building will be dedicated Friday. Open
house tours will be given, and James Watson,
who won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for discover
ing the structure of DNA, will be the featured
speaker.
Landscaping around the building has not
been completed.
See BEADLE on 3
Jay Calderon/DN
Oxford University Professor Martin Holmes directs the Nebraska at Oxford program. Holmes has been in Lincoln for
about three weeks recruiting for the program.
Oxford professor makes learning fun
By Doug Kouma
Senior Editor
Oxford University Professor Martin
Holmes realizes his students may not hang
on his every word when he talks about issues
like European agricultural policy.
So he doesn’t ask them to.
“I tell students to see the common agricul
tural policy as the pigs see it,” he said.
“What’s it like to be a sheep in the common
agricultural policy?”
Holmes, a senior research fellow at
Oxford’s Mansfield College and director of
the Nebraska at Oxford program, has been at
UNL for about three weeks, recruiting stu
dents for the program and teaching a gradu
ate course in the College of Business Admin
istration.
Holmes helped establish the month-long
Nebraska at Oxford summer program seven
years ago, and the number of students taking
part has more than doubled since then.
In fact, after 66 students traveled to Ox
ford last summer, Holmes said, the program’s
70-student limit could easily be reached this
year.
“We are pretty much pushing at our ceil
ing,” he said, “so we must be doing some
thing right.”
The program lets students earn Univer
sity of Nebraska-Lincoln credits by taking
two classes at Oxford, including Holmes*
course on the British political economy since
1945.
The courses are challenging, he said, but
experiencing British and European culture
first-hand expands students’ learning oppor
tunities.
“It should broaden their intellectual hori
zons,” Holmes said. “They are studying in a
different country with different faculty at a
different university. That, in itself, should
encourage development. And it does.”
Holmes said that in addition to classes,
students took part in a number of cultural
events and excursions.
“It’s the old cliche—work hard and play
hard,” he said.
But sometimes, students said, even that
wasn’t enough to spur their interest in the
subject matter. That’s where Holmes’ per
sonality and teaching style comes in.
Alison Means, a senior political science
and English major, studied in Oxford this
summer. She said Holmes made the course
exciting, though it wasn’t one she normally
would be interested in.
“He’s the best teacher I’ve ever had,” she
said. “He can make every lecture exciting,
from singing union songs to doing impres
sions of Winston Churchill and Margaret
Thatcher.”
Helen Fagan, a senior human resource
See HOLMES on 3
