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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 4, 1995)
New life leaves legacy behind My mother is scared she will become her mother. That woman, my grandmother, died when my mother was 6. My mother was sent to a birthday party on the day of the funeral. My mother has six years of memories, which she shared with me like bedtime stories. My mother’s mother baking cakes, playing tennis, smoking long cigarettes. My mother’s mother, a perfect figure with colorized pink cheeks and a stiff, starched apron. A face lifted from the yellowed pages of 40-year-old Life magazines, posing and smiling with a tub of cure-all-ills margarine. Forever young and pretty. Perfect. Dead. All her stories end with the word “cancer.” And for as long as I can remember, my mother has been sure that her story, too, will end with that word. My mother’s mother died when she was 39. My mother never thought she would greet 40. And when she did, she cried in confusion. All those years spent preparing for a tearful goodbye from a hospital bedside, where her children would be allowed to stand. All those moments of truth to ensure we’d never feel we missed our chance to tell her how we felt, to make our peace. My mother is scared that my sister and I will become her. As long as I can remember: “Rainbow isn’t going to get married, are you honey?” And I would shake my head, no, no, not me, Mom, I’m too smart for that. My sister never learned. Thus, my mother worried over every crush and prophesied all the bad decisions and wrong turns and tearful nights alone. Men can protect themselves, she would say, but I worry about my girls. When I brought home a perfectly nice young man with perfectly nice intentions, my mother’s eyes filled with sadness. She looked at me with my face plus 19 years and said, or did I just hear it, “Why didn’t you Rainbow Rowell “I am scared that I will become my mother. That I will become my mother's mother. Iam scared that there is no become, that there is only is and am." learn from my mistakes?” Her mistakes. I know them well. She’s told them like parables. How she found herself walking along paths where a woman shouldn’t be at night, by herself, so far from home. And the moral of this story is this: that I should succeed where she has failed, that I should be strong where she was weak. I am scared that I will become my mother. That I will become my mother’s mother. I am scared that there is no become, that there is only is and am. Because I blink away tears from my mother’s eyes, and I scream with her mouth. I wear her figure and answer the phone with her voice. Because I stand in the kitchen, and my brother says, “Hey, Mom,” and we share a confused moment over the sink. Because my grandmother peers from a picture in a worn photo album, a war bride watching me with eyes like Anne Frank’s. Because I feel her breath clotting my breasts and stamping me with a „ . <?3 * too-soon expiration date. I watch for them in me. My grandmother’s death, my mother’s life — I wait for them to conquer mine. My life. Like my own mother waiting for the cancer that she’s sure will come, I wait for her mistakes to stumble me. When I turned 19,1 stood in my dormitory room and stared at our face in the mirror. I was amazed and confused and, above all, relieved that I had somehow missed die wrong turn I’d been watching for. I’m not pregnant, I realized, and I’m not alone. I’m a college freshman, here on scholarship, and I’m still me. So far. And when I turned 22,1 mar veled again. That I hadn’t married the wrong man, that I didn’t hold my second child. That my life was still mine. A college junior, still on scholarship. In two weeks, I will receive a college degree, something these two women never did. Surely, I’ve come far enough. Surely, it’s too late to get caught in their loops, to be snagged by their lives. Surely, the wrong turns now, the tragedies and crushing realities will be my own. Rainbow doesn’t want kids, do you honey? This world is no place for children, she would say, there’s so much pain. And I would shake my head, no, no—but now, I don’t know. I think someday I would like a son. Or daughter. I would like to share with them everything I have and know. Everything I am. And I am me. And I am mother and my mother’s mother, just as I am my father and his parents. I would like to share that legacy with them, those unborn clean slates, without damning them to it. At least, I would like to try. Rowell is a senior news-editorial, adver tising and English major and the Daily Nebraskan managing editor. Birthday a time to assess J I am 31 today. That is, today is my birthday. I’m a Sagittarius. Sometime today I’ll stop over at one bar or another and get my free beer. I’ll call the astrology hotline and get my forecast for the coming year, forgetting it entirely within minutes. I’ll start the list which, battered, marked-through and greatly revised, will become my New Year’s Resolutions by the end of the month. And tonight when I get home I’ll find a message blinking on my phone — my mother and father singing happy birthday, my mother missing me. I may watch TV. I’ll read, possibly scribble in a notebook, and fall asleep a year older. Turning 30 was a milestone of some kind I suppose, and maybe I distrust milestones: signs calmly stating “You Are Here” with an arrow pointing to a tiny, tiny dot. But I recognize that something in me has changed: I regret that I am not farther along on my life’s path by now. Friends my age are teachers, professionals, small business owners. Two men I went to high school with are physicians in practice. And I? What have I done so far with my life? Though I am not the oldest undergraduate at UNL, I’m in the club. And as much as I enjoy working at the DN, I have to feel the pond gets a little smaller every year. So if I have to justify the way I’ve spent my life thus far, let me enumer ate my negative accomplishments: I haven’t made a bad marriage. I have yet to bring unwanted children into the world. By doing nothing I have spared the world a bad novel or two, rescued hundreds of students from mediocre instruction and aborted one more middle manager in the womb of commerce. I have not sold my brain for my breakfast. And my refusal to do so has, however imperceptibly, gummed the works of the great, blunt juggernaut Mark Baldridge “So, what do I do next? Where do I go from here?” that is America. I am not particularly proud of this record of inachievement but there it is — my best excuse for being alive. Until now. Now I feel new urge — a desire to accomplish something, to put my hand to the plow. It’s probably the ticking of my own biological clock. I know it is. I’m “enjoying” a burst of creative energy, the strength of my 30s. It will never come again and I have nothing to channel it into more significant than this—the opinion page of the Daily Nebraskan. To me that seems just plain wasteful. And temporary; I won’t be running this page much longer. So, what do I do next? Where do I go from here? I need to get some thinking done. I feel like I might have something to say, a voice to add to the great dialogue of humankind, whispering to itself in the dark end of one millen nium and the dawning of the next. I suspect I’m on the verge of being able to shape the ideas on which to base the rest of my career. My career? And what career is that? Ah, there’s the rub. Because I didn’t start my career in time, the time comes to do the work I should be doing and there’s no call for me to do it. I’m stuck in a different groove than my peers. I run along a different evolutionary track; neither fish nor fowl. And it appalls me that no one told me in my youth what I risked by slipping so far out of sync. When I thought it was all about money and making a living I made my life decisions. I’d do it again. But I had no idea what was at stake. That it was really about the arc of a life — that I risked barter ing my intellectual birthright for 10 years of slack. I reassure myself with the idea that my experiences have made me stronger — given me a depth I would not have had without them, but I don’t really believe it. I’d have had “experiences” one way or another — some of them much deeper than what’s available to those, like myself, who have slipped so easily along the surface of life. And so I face the fact that if my 20s are going to be of any use to me, it will have been in their squandering. Perhaps there is something to be learned from senseless waste, after all. Maybe I value things differently. Maybe it is only as you flush something valuable down the toilet that you realize its worth. And if that’s so, maybe I still have a chance to speak to those young men in their 20s —* the slackers. Listen, I’m not going to say don’t do it. I’m not going to say “get a real job.” Heck, it was good enough for me. What I am saying is, watch carefully as you fludi your 20s away. Know what it is you will be missing at 31. Not youth, not energy, but a slew of possible futures—gone. Are you listening? I tell you... kids today. Baldridge Is a senior English major and the Dally Nebraskan Opinion page editor. guest Mary G. McGarvey Old code of conduct hurts NU’s integrity On Dec. 5 the UNL Faculty Women’s Caucus will ask the Academic Senate to support several changes to the current procedures for dealing with violations of the Student Code of Conduct. The genesis of this proposal was, of course, the recent controversy surrounding Lawrence Phillips. As the Phillips case developed it became painfully obvious that UNL has no official policy for dealing with students involved in violent criminal behavior. The current code of conduct and disciplinary procedures are very specific in regard to on campus violations of university rules. On the other hand, when a student is involved in off-campus criminal behavior, the vice chancellor for student affairs and the judicial officer may or may not decide the offense is within the university’s jurisdiction, they may or may not review the case, and they may or may not impose sanctions. Confidentiality rules ensure that, in most cases, there is no record of how, why or even whether a particular case was considered. It is small wonder that, in the Phillips case, some believe that a gifted athlete was given special consideration and others believe that he was unfairlj singled out. Some believe that a crime of violence against women was trivialized while others believe the sanctions were, politically motivated. We have proposed that students who commit violent crimes should lose the privilege of representing the university in intercollegiate events or any other official capacity, those facing formal charges should be sus pended from participation pending resolution of the charges and these cases should be heard by the University Judicial Board, a committee of faculty and student peers. The proposal does represent a major change in UNL administra tive procedures, but the underly ing principles are not new and certainly not radical. First, the University of Nebraska has a responsibility to condemn violent behavior — not to condone, promote or excuse it. Second, all students represent ing UNL have a special obliga tion to uphold the image and integrity of the university. Finally, the integrity of the process requires a uniform code administered by an impartial review board of faculty and students. All organizations have the right and responsibility to maintain and protect their reputation. Some have expressed fears that our proposal violates the “presumption of innocence.” The presumption of innocence, however, only applies to criminal proceedings, not to civil or administrative processes. For exariipte, th^ciirTent Athletic Department Manual 1 states: “By suspending the student-athlete, the department and the university are in no way prejudging the situation; rather such action is taken in order to protect the intercollegiate athletics program and, specifi cally, the student-athlete’s team from negative media attention.” We believe the action should be taken, not to avoid “negative media attention,” but to protect the reputation and integrity of the university. Perhaps the biggest confusion surrounding our proposal is the idea that by suspending students from their official roles as university representatives we are singling out some students for “punishment” and letting others > off scot-free. Suspension in these cases is not intended as “punishment” for an offense. The university is simply protecting its reputation. Those found guilty will be punished by the criminal justice system. The principle that students representing UNL have a special obligation is well established. For example, the current UNL Student Athlete Handbook states “when you participate in intercol legiate athletics competition, you are representing the university and all the people who support us. As an intercollegiate athletics participant, you will be in the public eye, and your personal conduct should reflect favorably upon yourself, your team and the university.” Our proposal simply extends this principle to all students that represent UNL in intercollegiate r events, not just athletes. Not surprisingly, some student representatives in ASUN are uncomfortable with extending this principle. University policies on criminal convictions should be adminis tered uniformly across student organizations and not be confused with infractions of team rules. Consider for example the football team’s point system as reported in the DN. This system is: 1 -missing a class, 2-missing a icam meeting, j-missmga practice, 4-conviction of a misdemeanor, and 5-conviction of a felony. Losing five points results in suspension from the team. Ordinarily, two five point violations result in dismissal. One cannot help doing some arithmetic. Is a misdemeanor plus one missed class equal to a felony? Are two missed practices worse than a felony? The answer, of course, is that criminal convictions do not belong on the same list as infractions of team rules. Do other organizations have similar rules? Under the current system, who knows? Our proposal contains one significant change in current procedures. We place administra tive oversight in the hands of the judicial board, whereas the current policy gives complete discretion to coaches and admin istrators. Our proposal has been criticized as being too specific, too vague and unworkable. These arguments are simply rationales for doing nothing. The status quo puts UNL in the position of .continuing to condone andexcuse violent criminal behavior. Six years ago, the faculty at the University of Oklahoma endorsed a policy similar to but more stringent than our proposal. What do we at UNL fear? McGarvey is chair of the Facnlty Women’s Caacus aad an associate pro fessor of economics. *