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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.
