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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1996)
N R»n Sodemjn/DN HOLLY ZUMPFE, a junior psychology major, listens to Jane Elliot speak Wednesday night. Byan SoderlimDN . JANE ELLIOT greets the audience after speaking about racism and her famous “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” experiment at the Centennial Room in the Nebraska " Union Wednesday night. Speaker asks students to unlearn prejudice By Erin Schulte Senior Reporter Making people mad is what Jane Elliot does best. Wednesday, she shocked and delighted hundreds of UNL students with her blunt and sometimes profane stories about racism, sex ism and discrimination in general. Elliot, who created the famous “blue eyes/ brown eyes” experiment to teach people how it feels to be discriminated against, started her three-hour sound-off against racism by sharing her beliefs on issues people often ask her about: abortion, her sexual orientation, her guest spots on talk shows and politics. But she soon went on to the real meat and-potatoes of her talk: racism. How did this white woman who lives in Iowa become^ an expert on race? When the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot on April 4, 1968, Elliot said she was at home ironing a tepee her third-grade class had put together for their study of American Indians. She was listening to the news and heard a white male commentator say to a black person “When our leader was killed, his widow held us in line. Who’s go ing to hold your people together?” Please see ELLIOT o»6 Nebraska Union construction bids to be heard Friday By Kasey Berber Senior Reporter Nebraska Union officials have reopened bids for asbestos removal, following a series of un acceptable bids. New bids will be heard Friday. Daryl Swanson, director of the Nebraska Union, said the asbestos removal project pro duced seven rejected bids from construction companies. Swanson said the two lowest bids were from out-of-state construction companies not licensed to perform asbestos removal in Nebraska. The third-lowest bid was from National Ser vice Cleaning, the same company that has re cently removed asbestos from Burnett Hall. The bids ranged from $459,600 to $1,022,345. National Service Cleaning’s bid was $555,550. “Their bid is not that far off from what we’re looking at,” Swanson said. “But based on the amount of the two lowest bids, we’ll try again.” Bidding will also take place Friday for a gen eral contractor for the Union expansion project. Custody dispute prompts standoff By Erin Schulte Senior Reporter • - Lincoln Police officers and SWAT team members waited out a midnight standoff Wednesday with a distraught 32-year-old Lin coln woman who periodically came out of her house and pointed a shotgun at police officers. Lincoln Police Capt. Allen Soukup said po lice were having ongoing conversations with the woman by telephone and on the front porch of her home near 35th and Mohawk streets. A neighbor called police arouijd 8 p.m. and said the woman was despondent because of a child custody situation. The woman never fired her gun, Soukup said, but some neighbors were asked to leave their homes and others were asked to move to safe parts of their houses. Police cruisers, ambulances and a fire truck were parked on the the intersec tions of Mohawk and 35th and 37th Streets to act as barricades to prevent curious onlookers from getting too close to the house. /• Soukup said he thought conversations with the woman were going well and he hoped the standoff would be over during the nighttime or early morning hours. Rozier % i-s'. - By Steve Wilstein The Associated Press CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — Wide staples ran like a gridiron tattoo from the middle of Mike Rozier’s chest to his navel, flanked on the right by two blackened bullet boles, as if they were O’s in a gruesome football play sketch. “If one of those ballets was just a little bit over and hit the artery next to my kidney, I’d be dead now,” the 1983 Heisman Trophy winner at Nebraska said recently, nearly two weeks after a street shooting almost killed him and a friend. A thick cast covers a wound where a third bullet chipped off a chunk of the knuckle and bone on his right in dex finger, ripping through the back of his hand and out the palm. Down the hall at Cooper Hospital he visits with his friend, Bart Merrill, who also caught three bullets, one in his back that came out his chest, an other in his chest that tore into his lung, and one in his left forearm. Merrill’s 6-year-old daughter sits on the side of the bed, licking a green lollipop, staring curiously at the two mm in gauze, tape and plaster. Prayers and get-well cards from friends are tacked on the wall. They’ve heard the rumors, seen the newspapers, know people are wonder ing how Rozier, a running back who made millions as a pro, came to be gunned down in a “drug area” at 12:48 ajn. on Nov. 6. Police are not sure they buy Rozier’s story — an unprovoked attack by a drank. They wonder if there is a more sinister motive behind it ‘Tm die one who got shot Now Tm the bad guy,” Rozier said with a laugh, shaking his head. Some may wonder why Rozier is even living in Camden, a South Jersey city where gunfire is rampant, drugs and drinking are everywhere, and whole blocks look like boarded-up, bombed-out war zones. Directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Camden squeezes 200liquor stores and 200 churches into nine square miles— sin and salvation in perpetual battle for 87,000 souls. “They’re saying it’s a gangster ghetto-dope thing. Rozier’s in the wrong place. What’s he doing in Camden?” the 35-year-old Rozier said. “Man, I’m from Camden. I was bom and raised in Camden. When I got done with football season, I always came straight home. Most guys don’t go home. They’re scared to go back home because they fed like they failed. I go home. m—-^~——— To be honest with you, I never wanted to - ' .... •' play football. I wanted to be a trash man.” MbeRozeer former NU running back *1 started here and I want to end here—not that Fm trying to get killed or anything.” Others might not hang out on the street and drink beer with friends after midnight behind rows of a HUD hous ing project, but for Rozier there was nothing unusual or especially danger ous about it. This was his turf, a few blocks from the white, two-story house he’s long owned and fixed up nicely, close to his soother’s house and the friends he has known since childhood. The football field at his high school, Woodrow Wilson, bears his name. ’When bad things happen, people are going to start rumors,” said Phila delphia Eagles receiver Irving Fiyar, a : Please see ROZIEK on 7
