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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 24, 1996)
Tuesday September 24L1996 R»n Soderun/DN PROFESSOR JOHN WUNDER will travel toAustralia next year to help the Australian government improve its relationship with the aborigines Professor to take history to Australia UNL’s John Wonder hopes U.S. lessons* will help solve foreign problems. By Todd Anderson Staff Reporter As a native of the Great Plains and a successful historian and au thor, John Wunder is connecting history to the present and the Heart land to the world. Wunder, a UNL professor of his tory and director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, will travel to Australia next year as a fellow for the Australian National Humanities Center. The Australian Center chooses themes each year for topics of dis cussion, Wunder said. Next year 15 scholars from England, Canada, New Zealand, die United States and Australia will discuss the legal re lationships and identities of indig enous peoples undo* Australian law. As an expert on treatment of r . , American Indians under U.S. law, Wunder will share the lessons of U.S. history with. Australia. His 1994book, “Retained by the People,” is a history of American Indians and their treatment by the U.S. government, with special con sideration for the native peoples’ Bill of Rights adopted in 1968. Such expertise and his work in Finland last year involving the Lap* people provide Wunder with very useful insight into Australia’s own problems with issues involving ab original peoples, he said. Tryingto decide who is aborigi nal under the law is one of the many issues the scholars will discuss. The American and Australian governments’ attempts to assign roles to native peoples based on blood quantum and heritage have made laws complex and often in appropriate, he said. Wunder said a native’s identity under the law is important because it involves issues such as die grant ing of land. For this reason, leaders from aboriginal groups also will participate in the group’s discus sions. Wunder said the aboriginal «—- || We try to get some people together who don’t ordinarily get together.” John Wundek UNL history professor people are more organized now and are better represented by attorneys. He said the fellowship will be an important step for Australians, who have been grappling with these issues while dealing with a tainted history. Now, he said, the government is attempting to deal with the past and the present in an open, more humane manner. “They want new ideas. They want to debate these concepts from Please see WUNDER on 6 Despite trying to raise standards, By Ebin Schulte Senior Reporter Before coming to UNL, most stu dents took the ACT — they hunched over pages of bubble sheets, fought off migraines and wondered: “Why me?” For years, students have been sub jected to college entrance exams. And in the Midwest, die American College Test is used more often than the Scho lastic Assessment Test. But if the University of Nebraska Lincoln is trying to raise its standards to make a degree more meaningful, will the admissions office favor what is commonly viewed as the more “prestigious” test — the SAT? No, say admissions officials. “We’ve been an ACT state for a long time,” said Lisa Schmidt, direc tor of admissions. ACT scores are tra ditionally required by Midwest schools, and the SAT is more popular on the coasts. UNL receives about 9,000 ACT scenes from students each year, and gets only afew hundred SAT scores. Schmidt stressed, though, that UNL does not favor either die ACT dr SAT test for admission, and either can be used when applying for academic scholarships. Regents’ scholars usually have ACT scores of about 29 or SAT scores of about 1300, Schmidt said. The tendency of many Midwest state universities to require ACT in stead of SAT scores dates back almost 40 years. Kelley Hayden, director of-corpo rate communications for ACT, ex plained the history. After World War n, American servicemen flooded the classrooms of public universities, taking advantage of die GI Bill of .Rights. The GI Bill provided various benefits to veterans, including paying for college tuition. Later, these benefits were also ex tended to veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars. The only college admissions test available at the time was the SAT, ad ministered by the Educational Testing Service. Some ETS members thought the test was inappropriate for the new students. ,, “The test determined whether stu dents were going to be successful at the very best colleges,” Hayden said. “It was used to identify the cream of the crop.” But the returning servicemen weren’t all going to Harvard, and some weren’t prepared through traditional ar ■ ' ~ Tensions still high throughout Korea North refuses peace, speaker says By Matthew Waite Senior Reporter South Korea has tried to bring North Korea to the bargaining table, but efforts have been in vain so far, the South Korean ambassador to the United States said Monday. Kun Woo Park told more than 25 CBA faculty and students that the re cent incursion of the North Korean military only underscored how diplo matic efforts with the North have failed. Flanked by Rep. Doug Bereuter, Park spent Monday morning and part of the afternoon at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was finishing off a three-day visit to Nebraska. Park was invited by Bereuter, who is chairman of the House Subcommit tee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. The ambassador said of all the problems South Korea has overcome, one still remained — North Korea. “We have tried our best to accom modate them, to impress diem, to let them feel free to come to us, in vain so far,” Park said. Twenty North Koreans from a crashed submarine have died or have been killed in the recent incursion. Only one has been captured alive. Three South Korean soldiers have been killed and three others wounded. Soldiers continued Monday for a sixth day to search for five remaining soldiers still thought to be alive. Park said South Korea has made many efforts to try and deal with the North, including shipping tons of rice and making commitments to invest in the North. But Park gave the group, mostly Korean students, a history lesson — the history of Korea before and after the war with the North — before speaking about more current issues. The relationship between the United States and South Korea has come at great sacrifice, he said. South Korea will become one of the largest trading partners the United States has when it will overtake Great Britain later this year. Please see PARK on 6 Bomb scare suspect may face trespassing By Chad Lorenz Senior Reporter The person responsible for drop ping a package that caused a bomb scare at die governor's mansion Thurs day may$e charged with trespassing. Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey said his office would decide this week whether to press trespa|ising charges, which was the only law actu ally broken. The bomb scare started Thursday morning when a shoe box with a spin ning baly doll on top was found near the governor’s mansion. The Lincoln Fire Department bomb unit destroyed the device with a water cannon and determined it contained no explosives. Sgt. Mike Toby of the Nebraska State Patrol said a 21-year-old suspect who lives near the governor’s mansion was interviewed by the state patrol and the county attorney Friday. The suspect told police the box was an art sculpture he made. He said he had no reason for dropping it at the mansion, Toby said. Gov. Ben Nelson said Monday the scare probably wouldn’t cause any changes in security at the mansion. “I hope no one overreacts to this incident,” Nelson said. “Anytime we have an incident there’s a review of procedures. “But I hope we don’t think we have to create a fortress for the governor’s office and the governor’s residence.” m You can go to any Ivy League school with an ACT” KelleyHatokn college-preparatory courses. “We needed a test to point out the weaknesses and skills of the vast ma jority,” Hayden said. So a man named E.S. Lindquist, a member of the ETS who also helped develop the GED high school equiva lency test, broke off from the groups to write a new college entrance exam. Lindquist’s test, the ACT, focused more oh determining how well stu dents would do in their first year at a public university, Hayden said. The SAT, on the other hand, was designed to predict how students would perform at Ivy League-level schools, he said. Tbe ACT consists of four separate tests, Schmidt said: English, math, reading and science reasoning. Each section has a possible seme of 36, and Please see ACT on 6