Wednes
October 23,
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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.”