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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 16, 1996)
rVjihj TUESDAY T(L "T* | 4—V 1 WEATHER: I / \ I ~jT~Today - Mostly sunny & I I if ^ J ^ J W ■ warmer. Northwest wind ^1 I #1 m \ MM I I 15to25mph. md dm *JIL ,«JL» Tonight “ Partly cloudy, COVERING THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA SINCE 1901 VOL. 95 NO. 144 low in the lower 40s. — ^ ■ •,...-.- April 16,1996 Researchersfight to protect collection at Nebraska HaU By Erin Schulte Staff Reporter More than $140 million in irreplaceable historical artifacts are in danger of being ru ined by rainwater coming through the ceil ing at Nebraska Hall. All that is protecting the artifacts are sheets of plastic and some duct tape. Employees have been trading research duties to mop and empty buckets full of wa ter. Huge trash cans are filling up in various parts of the fifth floor every two hours, said Brett Ratcliffe, a professor and curator of insects. Pumps have been installed, and profes sors came in on the weekend to rig up huge plastic sheets to the ceiling bars with duct tape. “This is what we got a Ph.D. for?” Ratcliffe said as he adjusted a dripping piece of plastic. The efforts are to protect artifacts used by scientists all around the world, Ratcliffe said. The 14 million specimens held in Ne braska Hall function as a library of history. Researchers can request to check out and study specimens, and some come to Ne braska to study them. The west side of the building, built in the ’50s, has had constant leakage problems since September 1994. Three weeks ago, the roof literally began collapsing around them from water, said Peg Bolick, curator of * botany. Not only are ceiling panels falling into the protective plastic, the plaster in the roof is falling down in huge chunks. During an interview, a section of ceiling collapsed. “One fell that hit so loud you could hear it a block away,” Ratcliffe said. “It was like a bomb went off.” The building was scheduled to be re roofed this spring, Ratcliffe said. But a new plastic membrane recently developed for roofing delayed the project until July, he said. Funding for deferred maintenance is also a problem, he said, with lots of buildings on campus needing repairs. “Something always has to give,” Ratcliffe said. “And rigjit now, it’s our ceiling.” Maintenance and custodial workers have been doing their best to keep up with the leaks, Ratcliffe said, but it might not be enough. If water seeps under the huge metal cabi Scott Bruhn/DN Brett Ratcliffe, a professor and curator of insects, is part of an effort to save more than $140 million in historical artifacts and insect specimens in Nebraska Hall. nets used to store insects, botanical speci mens and historical artifacts, the bottoms could begin to rust out. If they do, air, pests hnd light could get into the cabinets and de stroy specimens, Ratcliffe said. So far, no specimens have been lost. Some have been damaged, Ratcliffe said, and if they cannot be properly dried, they will be gone forever. “We have a slice of time represented with those specimens that you can’t go back and recapture,” Ratcliffe said. Some of the collections are unique to Nebraska, Ratcliffe said. The prairie plant and animal specimens are unmatched by any other collection in the country, Ratcliffe said. Professors said they are not angry with the university, and they understand that it takes time to re-roof a building, “We’re frustrated with the system,” Ratcliffe said. “The university is doing all it can, but the wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly.” The problem is not limited to Nebraska Hall, Bolick said. She said maintenance workers told her that Andrews Hall and the College of Law also kept them busy after recent rainfalls. Repairing damage to Nebraska Hall’s roof should take priority, research assistant Mary Jameson said. “It seems like they could have placed a priority on preserving Nebraska heritage.” Art shows victims' lives in Nazi camps By Chad Lorenz'.T Senior Reporter Norbert Troller was a privileged victim of the Holocaust. Nazi officials permitted him to go outside the fences of concentration camps to paint the beauty of surrounding countrysides. His paintings, which were used as covers for reports sent to Gestapo headquarters, kept the Nazis from killing him. “But it gave him the chance to show the con trast between the inside and the outside,” said Sybil Milton, senior historian of the United States Holocaust Museum. Milton spoke at the University of Nebraska Lincoln’s Bessey Hall Monday night about the few art pieces that survived the concentration camps and ghettos of WWII. Milton was spon sored by the Harris Center for Judaic Studies. The 17,000 works preserved around the world are only one-fourth of all the works cre ated, Milton said. • Dr. Sybil Milton will speak again tonight at the annual Holocaust Memorial Observance at 7:30 p.m. at the Nebraska State Capitol. Milton showed slides of several works that survived WWII as she commented on the his tory of each. Holocaust prisoners used scant materials they smuggled or stole to depict their hardships with rough, simple images, she said. “They’re not social critics... They’re victims and observers.” Many of the works showed thin, sickly pris oners —- standing in food lines, laboring, crowded into barracks and gazing forlornly into the distance. , One work vividly showed a man passing a loaf of bread over a mangled mass of barbed wire to a woman and child. The artist left the concentration camp’s background a blur to em phasis the separated family and food shortage, Milton said. Karl Schevesik sketched his images on mock-postage stamps, one-inch by one and a half. He depicted the French ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity as they applied to con centration camps: • Prisoners were liberated, within the con fines of the barbed fences of work camps. • Men, women and children suffered equally. • Fraternity was strong, among the French police. See HOLOCAUST on 6 Veto could bring small tuition rise By Ted Taylor Senior Reporter ~ . The University of Nebraska was again the target of Gov. Ben Nelson’s red pen Monday, as $2 million of the general funds provided to the university was vetoed from LB 1189. The Legislature presented Nelson with its main budget bill Thursday, calling for $5 mil lion to cover the difference between a 3 percent and 4 percent salary increase for NU employ ees. Last year, Nelson vetoed the funds that asked for the 4 percent salary requirements — allow ing only an increase of 3 percent. But Nelson said the remaining funds for the university would be enough. “The remaining $3 million should be suffi cient to allow the university to meet its most pressing financial needs,” Nelson said during a late-afternoon press conference. Nelson would not call the vetoed funds a cut, and he said that with the $37.6 million of addi tional general funds the state already had ap propriated, the university should be able to manage its budget and see no significant in crease in tuition. NU Vice President few External Affairs James B. Milliken agreed. “I think we’ve been treated quite fairly,” he said. “Everybody at the university recog nizes the need to keep tuition at a reasonable level. I don’t expect any dramatic conse quences in terms of tuition.” March revenue fig ures for the university, Milliken said, made him believe the gover nor did “what he thought was fair and reasonable.” “Under the circum stances, we find our selves in April 1996, we are not disap pointed with the out come,” Milliken said. “It is less than we had hoped for, and we’ll do everything we can to minimize the im pact.” "/ think we've been treated quite fairly. Everybody at the university recognizes the need to keep tuition at a reasonable level. JAMES B. MILUKEN NU vice president for external affairs ASUN President Eric Marintzer, however, said any increase in tuition would be detrimen tal to students, and he said Nelson’s actions put NU in a debt situation to make up the funds for the salaries. “If we are going to have to have a tuition increase, I would like to see it go to facility improvement,” he said. A 1 percent increase in tuition would result in only $800,000 — and the funds needed to match the salary requirements would have the university looking elsewhere. Marintzer said to make up for those funds, the money would have to come from the stu dents, “instead of something we should have got from Gov. Nelson.” NU President Dennis Smith was out of town and unavailable for comment Monday. Nelson announced all of the spending reduc tions Monday before he signed and sent LB 1189 back to the Legislature. Some of the other institutions that were af fected by Nelson’s vetoes included Nebraska’s state and community colleges. General funding for state colleges was reduced by $15,529, while community colleges will see a $27,787 decrease. Nelson also vetoed $200,000 of the $350,000 the Legislature set aside for {Nison planning. That money was for the Department of Cor rectional Facilities to prepare preliminary de signs for a new 480-bed prison. Senators will attempt to override any vetoes Thursday during the final day of the 1996 ses sion.