Unforgiven
Passage of time can’t hide NU’s problems
Some people may say that talking
about abuse and sexual harassment
on this campus is like beating a dead
horse.
I don’t agree; the subject is more
than noteworthy, and the horse
needs to be reincarnated until
something is done.
Certain members of our repeat
National Championship football
team have had much experience
with the law and, above all, harass
ment.
Other members of our student
body (non-athletes) are guilty of the
same crimes as well.
As a child, I can remember my
mother telling me to treat all girls
and women with the same respect
that I would treat her.
I always have tried to do just
that, but as a human being, I have
made my mistakes just like everyone
else.
But I have never physically
threatened a woman with my fist.
Never did several women publicly
accuse me of sexual harassment.
And never did I embarrass and
disgrace a woman by showing
disrespect for her body in a public
or private place.
Anyone who has is not a friend of
mine.
The Husker football team is
supposed to be the pride of this
university. When the rest of
America hears the words Univer
sity of Nebraska-Lincoln, the
people think of powerhouse
football.
But along with Husker football,
America has been provoked to think
that UNL also represents violent
acts, men on trial, and crimes of
assault and sexual harassment.
I don’t want anyone to be led to
believe such things of this fine
institution.
When I was home in Chicago
over winter break, everyone I spoke
to — friends, family and.even
Bob Ray
“That ivasn yt Lawrence
Phillips’first brush with
the law in the state of
Nebraska, and L want to
know why he wasn’t
expelled by this
university. ”
strangers — tore into this place, and
why?
Well, for a good reason. Because
about four months ago, an incredible
athlete with a responsibility to his
fans and more importantly to
himself, scaled a terrace, broke into
an apartment and physically
assaulted a woman and a fellow
team member.
That wasn’t Lawrence Phillips’
first brush with the law in the state
of Nebraska, and I want to know
why he wasn’t expelled by this
university.
We are not running a day care
center. The way the Phillips
situation was handled was abso
lutely appalling.
Come on — no matter who the
student is, there are only so many
chances they can be given.
I can try to understand Coach
Osborne’s reasoning behind keeping
Phillips on the team and letting him
play again.
But behind Osborne’s good
intentions came national scrutiny of
his entire football squad, of the
university and of the state of
Nebraska.
And even though in a few years
the rest of America may not remem
ber, it still matters.
It’s the moral principle, the
foundation that so many Nebraskans
are raised to have.
Too many people are getting
hurt, women especially. And why?
Because no one in authority will
make an example out of someone
who has taken advantage of the
system.
How many abused and sexually
harassed women does it take for this
university to do something? How
much more does the law-abiding
student have to take?
Someone in administration must
take a stand on these crimes, at least
for our future. Ignore the political
circles that are keeping these
students enrolled and take a stand
on these crimes.
If the state judicial system won’t
convict them, then the university
needs to.
Expel these individuals if they
are guilty; politely say “thanks for
coming, but the party’s over, pal.”
I want to be proud to tell people
that I graduated from the University
of Nebraska-Lincoln. That our
football team won back-to-back
National Championships. That our
volleyball team won a champion
ship. And that I thoroughly enjoyed
the campus, the state of Nebraska
and the people.
The issue of domestic abuse and
violence is about the victims. Have
some compassion for them, not the
criminals.
Ray is a senior broadcasting major
and a Daily Nebraskan columnist
Mind altering
Earth has caught the deadly disease of life
The other day while l as shooting
up heroin ... or was it cocaine, I
forget.
Maybe it was in the afterglow of
unprotected oral copulation that I „
first thought it — or it might have
been while I was all jacked up on
six cups of black coffee, washed
down around two “espresso”
brownies...
In any case, something —
whether illegal, immoral or fattening
— first made me realize:
Life: It’s sort of addictive.
It’s a hard habit to kick —
It’s a trip —
It can be Mind Altering.
And just about here I realized
that, like addiction, life is a disease.
A particularly virulent disease
that Mother Earth caught some time
ago and hasn’t been able to shake.
A couple of ice ages later, life
still clings to her surface like a bad
case of trench foot, a monkey on her
back.
And life begets, as a matter of
course, death and decay — a malady
of which the other planets remain
blissfully unaware.
On Mars, time stands almost still.
Minerals don’t require a lot of it.
There, eternity is measured out in
baker’s dozens of millennia.
There, stones sitting in sunlight
pass for sight. And the air smells
like nothing, not even the dirt it
carries at speeds approaching Mach
1. Because the dirt, like everything
else on Mars, is lifeless, odorless,
natural, perfect.
It’s Earth that’s the freak. The
stumbling junkie of the solar system,
Earth has yet to admit she has a
problem; the first step to a cure.
Even if Earth were to kick the habit
tomorrow — in a devastating natural
disaster, say, or searing nuclear
holocaust—the danger would
persist.
Without constant vigilance the
Earth would slide back into her old
ways again. Cockroaches first; later,
Mark Baldridge
“The stumbling junkie of
the solar system, Earth
has yet to admit she has
a problem, the first step
to a cure. ”
dinosaurs.
There is no safe amount of life.
And we are that drug, the fix the
earth would crave — if ever she
tried the cure. We are the pestilence
and plague ... but we think we are
the thing itself.
In this we are mistaken: The
Earth might one day go ‘round
without us—we, on the other hand,
will not go ‘round without her.
We are the drug.
Perhaps heroin, while it lasts in
the body, thinks IT is the person,
and that the personality it covers and
deforms is merely the bedrock, the
flimsy crust it inhabits.
The drug, like life, has a strong
sense of its own identity and
continuance. Self-preservation ranks
high on the list of priorities for
drugs—they want to go on living,
even at the expense of the human
they inhabit.
And some drugs, alcohol for
instance, can pollute their environ
ment to the point of exhaustion —
literally succeeding themselves out
of a home.
In the meantime, drugs may
represent a kind of mineral attempt
at life; while we cling dependently
on the skin of our Earth, the drug in
us rolls itself in a flesh blanket.
It tries to enter into time through
our biology.
| But its success is only partial —
perhaps that’s why some drugs bring
with them a sense of timelessness.
The mineral consciousness is
waking in our minds.
The analogy is flawed, of course.
Most drugs are the product of
biological processes, unprotected
sex is morally indefensible, blah
blah blah.
I bet you can come up with an
objection of your own.
The thing is, it’s just words. It’s a
game I’m playing with the words
that stand for ideas that constitute
the world.
You can kind of see how a guy
like me might be burned as a heretic
in a more literal age —- a witch; I
can’t resist screwing with the reality
controls.
But then what do we mean by
“sight” if not stones warmed in the
sun?
What do we mean by “time” and
“life” and “thought?^ '
| Damned if I know.
But people like me, we don’t care
anymore about the so-called
answers you find in books like the
Bible and “Dianetics.”
People like me say, “Curb your
dogma! Can’t you see? It’s just a
game.”
But some people play too rough.
They should be suspended.
In that light, and lest some
overzealous bike cop take a fancy to
my buttocks, I might say here that I
haven’t actually tried heroin or
cocaine... yet.
But follow my metaphor anyway.
It might be fun.
Baldridge is a senior English major and
blah blah blah.
Long-shotcandidate
may cause an upset
David Broder
EPSOM, N.H. —What
happened here last Thursday
night demonstrates why million
aire publisher Steve Forbes has
gone beyond his lavish self
financed television campaign and
become a personal force to be
reckoned with in Republican
presidential politics.
Almost 300 people jammed a
crossroads restaurant on a foggy
winter night to listen to, and
cheer, the political novice from
New Jersey. Drawn simply by
newspaper ads and the word-of
mouth interest in his seemingly
quixotic effort to rewrite the tax
code and shake up the Washing
ton political establishment.
Susan Webb of Pembroke said
it was “the first candidate’s rally
I’ve ever been to,” — and she
liked what she heard. “He’ll run
the country like a business,” she
said. “And I really like the idea
that he would stop taxing retire
ment checks.”
From young people like Mark
Jennings, who said he switched
on the spot to Forbes from Senate
Majority Leader Robert J. Dole,
to grizzled veterans of New
Hampshire campaigns like Roger
Lagasse, who found InForbes “a
sense of the country like Ronald
Reagan had,” Forbes clearly
made votes by his personal
campaigning.
That was not something this
awkward, owlish tycoon seemed
capable of doing when he began
this effort a few months ago. He
remains a long shot for the
nomination, but he clearly has
changed the dynamics of the
Republican race.
With the wisdom of hindsight,
one can see that Forbes has
combined three appeals with
powerful chemistry for Republi
can voters:
First, he is Mr. Tax-Cutter —
something that Republicans have
cherished ever since the Kemp
Roth across-the-board tax cut
proposal of 1978 gave the
Watergate-damaged GOP its
keynote to recovery. Alone in the
GOP field, Forbes is promoting a
flat tax that also would be a tax
cut, he claims, for every taxpayer,
no matter his or her income.
Other candidates are focused on
balancing the budget and are
inhibited by the memory of
Reagan-era deficits. Forbes goes
right on promoting the supply
side faith that cutting rates will
eventually boost revenues, so why
worry about a few hundred billion
dollars of deficits?
Second, he is Mr. Upbeat,
promising a bigger, brighter,
better future — if only we break
the shackles of the current tax
system. Others in the race,
notably former Tennessee Gov.
Lamar Alexander and Sen. Phil
Gramm of Texas, also talk about
the promise of America, but
Forbes sells it better.
Third, he is Mr. Outsider, the
“With the wisdom of
hindsight, one can see
that Forbes has
combined three
appeals with powerful
chemistry for
Republican voters. ”
most anti-Washington candidate,
bashing the capitol and its
politicians in his highly negative
ads abdut Dole and Gramm, and
pushing term limits, the favorite
populist panacea for the political
system.
The last Republican who
successfully combined those three
appeals — the optimistic, tax
cutting outsider—was in fact
Ronald Reagan, who almost upset
the incumbent Republican
president here in New Hampshire
in 1976 and blew away the field
four years later.
Forbes is no Reagan when it
comes to campaigning, but
neither is anyone else running in
1996. He has become very
disciplined in delivering his
stump speech, hitting the same
applause lines each time, and he
is getting a bit looser and more
effective in playing to his
audiences as his confidence
grows. Press conferences do not
faze him.
The rich kid background that
rivals thought would be his
vulnerability, may turn out to be
his shield. Jim Courtovich,
Gramm’s New Hampshire,
manager, jibes that “the toughest
challenge Steve Forbes ever had
to face was when he was a sperm
swimming upstream to the egg.”
But most voters are like the
Claremont watch repairman who
said, “With his wealth, you know
he’s not in it for the money.
These other guys are all looking
out for themselves.”
What is notably un-Reaganlike
about the Forbes campaign is the
savagery of his anti-Dole ads,
which come close to calling the
Kansas senator a liar. Forbes has
drawn Dole into a tit-for-tat
negative TV war, in which Dole
decries Forbes’ “untested
leadership and risky ideas.” Some
of Dole’s own key New Hamp
shire supporters worry that four
more weeks of this negative
fusillade before the Feb. 20
primary could damage both Dole
and Forbes and open the way for
a closing-week rush by Gramm or
Alexander or even conservative
commentator Patrick J.
Buchanan, should one of them get
a boost from his showing in the
Feb. 12 Iowa caucuses.
Forbes himself still faces huge
challenges. His signature flat tax
proposal is coming under
increasing criticism from his New
Hampshire rivals, because it
wipes out the deductions for
property taxes, home mortgage
interest and charitable contribu
tions that are important to many
individuals and interest groups
here. Forbes may not be able to
survive that counterattack. But
New Hampshire is no longer in
the bag for anyone — and Forbes
can take credit for that.
©1996, Washington Post Writers Group
BE OUR GUEST
The Daily Nebraskan will present a guest columnist each week. Writers
from the'university and community are welcome.
Must have strong writing skills and something to say.
Contact Doug Peters c/o the Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union,
1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588, or e-mail at letters@unlinfo.unl.edu.
Or by phone at (402)-472-l 782.