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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 23, 1996)
Wednes October 23, * nuimj_■_ ■ r Daniel J. Luederi/DN ABOVE: (clockwise from top right) Dave Hovis, Hank Schmidt, Therese Bouc, Cookie Noonan and Marilyn Kahler, members d Abel Hall’s maintenance staff, take a morning break. BELOW LEFR Beatrice McDaniel vacuums a hallway during her k' shift as one.ofthe Abel Hall maintenance workers. Custodians find dudes satisfying, frustrating By Kasey Berber Senior Reporter They’ve cleaned some of the most dis gusting messes students can leave behind — only to get up the next morning and do it all over again. They’re not unlucky moms and dads, they are the men and women who work as custo dians in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s residence halls. Many have been employed by UNL for years. Some have been with the university for decades. Margaret Taylor, Abel-Sandoz custodian, has been cleaning for 22 years, while Lloyd Grandson, another Abel-Sandoz custodian, nas oeen nere nve years longer. Both said students are as messy now as they were 20 years ago. And if students’ still haven’t learned to pick up after themselves, what motivates the crew of about 65 custodians to keep doing it for them? Beatrice McDaniel, Abel-Sandoz custo dian, said it’s personal. “I’m proud of this university when I do my job,” McDaniel said. “It’s just knowing that I got the job done.” Jackie Hladik, Cather-Pound custodian, said a different kind of motivation kept bring ing her back. “From the day I started, I thought that stu Please see CUSTODIAN on 3 Regents plan skybox contract, new meters From Staff Reports The university could cut about $1.5 million and one year out of the $36-million Memorial Stadium Improvements project by hiring one per son for two jobs. The NU Board of Regents is scheduled to award a contract in its Friday meeting to a con struction consultant/contractor for the project, which includes the construction of 40 skyboxes. The change could push the completion date from June 2000 to June 1999. Paul Carlson, UNL associate vice chancellor for business and finance, said the university could award a contract to a construction consultant where the consultant may also be the general con tractor. However, the contract allows the university to hire a different contractor if it disapproves of the consultant’s work, Carlson said. The cost for hiring a consultant/contractor should not exceed $500,000. This hiring setup was first used for the Infor mation Science Technology and Engineering Building at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. In July, the board approved the project’s pro gram statement. In August, it approved the firm of Sinclair Hille and Associates in association with Lescher and Mahoney SPORTS for the project’s design services. Regents will also be asked to approve spend ing money so students will have a harder time parking by “free” broken meters after the board approves replacing 300 mechanical meters with meters that are electronic. The board is scheduled to approve the use $50,000 of surplus parking services bond rev enue to purchase the meters. Tad McDowell, parking service manager, said one move to replace 300 old meters with elec tronic meters was less expensive than maintain ing the mechanical meters or replacing them in dividually. l he new meters cost about each, he said, which is twice as much as a mechanical meter. “What is saved in maintenance cost far and above outweighs the added cost of electronics,” he said. The battery-operated meters, which are cur rently used in visitor lots on City and East cam puses, have a quartz digital display showing how many minutes are left on the meter. The meters are low maintenance and will also meet requirements set by the Americans with Disabilities Act, McDowell said. Virus-hunting couple tells tale of fight against Ebola By Matthew Waite Senior Reporter Sick people don't ever want to meet Gerald and Nancy Jaax. The two are experts in lethal viruses and on the front lines of America’s re search and defense of Ebola and other fatal viruses. Both are colonels in the Army’s veterinary corps, a group who’s major responsibility is to defend the United States against biological weapons and emerging diseases. “If you wake up and see these people trying to take your temperature, you can assume that’s bad,” Gerald Jaax said. The two spoke Tuesday at the Uni versity of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Lied Cento: for Performing Arts as the sec ond installment of the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues. Their lecture, “Lethal Viruses, Ebola and the Hot Zone: Worldwide Transmission of Fatal Viruses,” com bined humor and biology for the more than 1,500 people at the Lied. The hus band-and-wife team talked and showed slides of their own experience with an Ebola outbreak. In Reston, Va, in 1989, a veterinar ian called the Jaaxes because some monkeys in quarantine were getting sick. The couple went out and found 450 monkeys infected with Ebola. Ebola has three known strains — Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan and Ebola Reston, all named for where they were discovered. Ebola Zaire has a 90-percent fatal ity rate; Sudan is fatal in 60 percent of its cases. Humans can be infected with the Reston strain, but the virus has little effect—something the Jaaxes couldn’t explain. Otherwise, the Reston strain was similar to the other two strains. After Ebola was diagnosed in Reston, the Jaaxes went to work. “And like all good bureaucrats, we had a meeting,” Gerald Jaax said. The Jaaxes, along with the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Defense, the World Health Organiza tion and other health-care groups, di vided up the workload. Gerald Jaax assembled a team of 18 volunteers to go in and get the mon keys. Nancy Jaax was part of the team that did extensive tissue research. ' Four of the five workers in the quar antine house were infected, but all sur vived. Of the 42 on the medical team at Reston, none were infected with Ebola. The operation, Gerald Jaax said, was nothing like die movies. With a humorous slide, Gerald Jaax 66-:--— - If you wake up and see these people trying to take your temperature, you can assume that's bad * Col. Gerald Jaax showed that in the movies, the actors can go from the first detection of the virus to saving the world in one day. “It took us all day to catch one monkey in a room about a third this size of this stage,” he said. Except for Reston, all of the Ebola outbreaks have been in Africa—which makes Reston more of a jnystery to researchers. But, Nancy Jaax said, the world has ' • ' . ■ • • l a ■ r become a lot smaller, and anyone can be anywhere in the world in 24 hours. However, Gerald Jaax said Ebola is not the virus that could cause a na tionwide epidemic. He said it caused outbreaks, but they were well con tained by die disease itself. “If you have the Ebola virus, you are not going to go to die mall ami in fect a lot of people,” he said. “You are going to be so sick.”