THURSDAY
WEATHER:
Today - Partly cloudy
and cooler. Northwest
wind 20 to 30 mph.
Tonight - Windy. Cloudy.
Low in the mid 30s.
_ _October 19, 1995_
Jay Calderon/DN
Chad Grace, president of the UNL Boxing Club, spars with a partner at the YMCA Wednesday night.
Boxing Club wants back on campus
From Staff Reports
After a two year absence from the campus
arena, the UNL Boxing Club is trying to step
back into the ring.
Members of the club would like to practice
on campus, but administrators say there isn’t a
place for the club.
The club now practices in the downtown
YMCA’s aerobics room. But the room is too
small to set up a boxing ring, said club presi
dent Chad Grace. And besides, he said, it costs
$15 per person per month to use.
Grace, a senior construction management
major, said he had been bounced from one
administrator to another, trying to find the club
a home.
But James Griesen, vice chancellor for stu
dent affairs, said the club will probably never
practice on campus. The Campus Recreation
Center, in consultation with the University
Health Center, decided three years ago to ban
boxing from the Rec Center.
“If it’s unacceptable in the Rec Center,”
Griesen said, “it’s unacceptable in our other
facilities.”
Unless Grace can present new evidence
showing that the 1992 decision was flawed,
Griesen said, the Boxing Club must practice
off campus.
Grace first asked to use Schramm Resi
“It just seemed like I’m getting a lot of runaround. ”
CHAD GRACE
President of the UNL boxing club
dence Hall’s basement, which is empty.
But Douglas Zatechka, housing director,
said the club couldn’t use Schramm. Though
the basement is close to empty,
Zatechka said, it might be used in the future for
storage or some other purpose.
“The answer is no,” Zatechka said.
Instead, Zatechka suggested that Grace talk
to Stan Campbell, Campus Recreation direc
tor.
“Housing is not a recreation department for
athletic organizations,” he said.
Grace said that frustrated him because the
club was organized under the Office of Student
Involvement, not Campus Recreation.
Another concern for Zatechka is liability.
“When Campus Recreation feels there’s
some liability issues,” he said, “I’m going to
listen to those people because they have a lot
more understanding of those issues than I.”
Campus Recreation banned boxing in its
facilities in 1992. Campbell said he based that
decision on meetings with University Health
Center officials and UNL’s Risk Management
Office. A 1983 American Medical Association
report that encouraged the elimination of ama
teur boxing was another factor, he said.
The report states a list of resolutions adopted
by the AMA. The association resolved to “pub
licize the deleterious effects of boxing on the
health of participants” and “encourage the
elimination of boxing from amateur scholas
tic, intercollegiate and governmental athletic
programs as detrimental to the health of par
ticipants.”
“The basic concern we have is for the safety
of the students involved in the activity,”
Campbell said.
Keeping boxing off campus is not a liability
issue, Griesen said.
“It’s a matter of the university officials ...
saying ‘no, boxing does bad things to students’
brains and we do not support boxing on this
campus as a sport,”’ he said.
See BOXING on 6
Texan says
he’d accept
top position
By Paula Lavigne
Senior Reporter
A Texas administrator who resigned from
his post amid controversy was one of the first
nominees for UNL’s chancellor position, he
said Wednesday.
Ryan Amacher, former president of the
University of Texas at Arlington, said the
chancellor search committee sent him a letter
early this summer saying that he had been
nominated for the position and requesting that
he submit a resume.
David Sellmyer, chairman of the Univer
sity of Nebraska-Lincoln chancellor search
committee, said the list was down to fewer
than 10 candidates but would not name them.
Sellmyer declined to say whether Amacher
was ever a candidate or if he would be on the
short list of candidates to be presented to NU
President L. Dennis Smith in November.
Amacher said he heard from the search
committee about three weeks ago saying they
had narrowed the list to between 15 and 20
candidates.
He has not heard from them since, he said,
but would accept the position if it was offered.
“I enjoy administration. I think I’m good at
it,” he said. “I’m not looking, but if the right
job comes along I’m ready to try it.”
Amacher is on a year leave with $155,000
pay from UTA and is writing a book about
higher education. He resigned in June from the
UTA presidency amid controversy.
Two articles in the March 7,1995, issue of
“The Shorthorn,” the UTA student newspaper,
detailed a university audit that accused
Amacher of the following:
• failing to meet with deans and depart
ment chairpersons for six months after taking
office in July 1992
• bypassing established hiring mechanisms
in order to select a personal friend, who lacked
experience, as athletic director
• mishandling university funds
• refusing to raise academic standards
• firing high-ranking officials for illegiti
mate reasons
Amacher said the audit did not prompt his
resignation.
“I viewed my job as being a change agent,”
he said, “but it was interfering in the develop
ment of the university.”
The situation escalated until Amacher’s
personal life became involved, he said.
“I was getting death threats and needed
police protection,” he said, “and I’m not even
the football coach.”
Robert Witt is acting UTA president until a
search committee finds a replacement.
When the UNL chancellor search commit
See SEARCH on 3
Student aid cuts advance further
By Paula Lavigne
Senior Reporter
Two bills that would cut $15 bil
lion out of student financial aid are
working their way through Congress
and should reach the president by the
end of the month.
The omnibus reconciliation bill,
which contains about $10.7 billion in
cuts to student loans, is being bundled
into one bill along with Medicaid and
Medicare cuts.
The bill aims to balance the bud
get by 2002. The Senate version also
would put an .85 percent tax on col
leges and universities based on the
amount of money students borrow.
The House and Senate are ex
pected to discuss the bill on or around
Oct. 24, said Ken Mclnemey, assis
tant director of government affairs at
the National Association of Student
Financial Aid Administrators in
Washington D.C.
About 10,000 students at the Uni
versity of Nebraska-Lincoln rely on
federal loans.
After the House and Senate agree
on a final bill, it goes to the president
for his signature or veto.
President Clinton is threatening to
veto the bill, Mclnemey said. If that
happens, he said, the bill goes back to
Congress for revision.
The appropriations bill, which
contains cuts to Pell Grants, has been
passed by the House and is waiting
for approval by the Senate.
The House and Senate have yet to
agree on the appropriations bill,
Mclnemey said.
“There’s a big difference on how
the Senate would do that and how the
House would do that,” he said.
The Senate would provide $6.1
billion for Pell Grants, which is $400
million more than the amount allo
cated by the House. It still falls short
of the current $6.2 billion.
However, the Senate would in
crease the maximum award by $100
and maintain the minimum award at
$400.
The House would reduce Pell
Grant funding to $5.6 billion, raise
the maximum award by $100 and
increase the minimum award to $600.
But it would eliminate 280,000 stu
dents from the program.
Mclnemey said there had been
minor changes in the bills within the
past month. The most notable was a
move to cap lending for 1995 direct
See AID on 3
Internet needs funds
to help NU keep pace
By Paula Lavigne
Senior Reporter
As the world cruises along the
information superhighway, Internet
users at UNL may
get caught in a
traffic jam.
With e-mail
traffic getting
heavier, the num
ber of accidents
also is on the rise.
Guy Jones,
■ -)'nnnr\ mana§er °f busi
ness fmanCC
users support at
source Center, said
UNL had about 300 e-mail users a
few years ago.
Today, it has more than 5,000.
About 85 percent of the faculty
and staff at the University of Ne
braska-Lincoln are hooked up, he
said, and the easy access to web pages
and free connections in residence halls
also have boosted Internet usage.
As more people became familiar
with the Internet, he said, it became
less of a “cute toy” and more of an
essential tool.
While the number of accounts has
grown, funding and staffing has not,
See INTERNET on 3
